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Ralph Waldo Emerson 

Arranged by Margaret B. Shipp 




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James Pott & Company 
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THE LIBRARY OF 
CQNGRESS. 

Two Copies Received 

AUG. 1 1901 

Copyright entry 

CLASS CL xXc. N3. 

COPY B. 



Copyrighted, 1901, by 
JAMES POTT & CO. 



" TROW DIRECTORY 
PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY 
NEW YORK 



To 
S. H. B. and F. H. B. 

with your daughter's love. 



PREFACE. 

'.* There was a majesty about Emerson 
beyond all other men that I have ever 
known, and he habitually dwelt in that 
ampler and diviner air to which most of 
us, if ever, rise only in spurts." 

James Russell Lowell. 

A daily contact with a soul so serene, 
so lofty as his, must help us in the effort 
to rise to the " diviner air." The friends 
of Emerson speak of his oceanic calm. 
He shows us the secret springs which 
feed that ocean, — his rapture in the vital 
Universe, his faith in the Divine imma- 
nence in the world. 

It is wished that this little book may 

3 



PREFACE. 



reach those who will welcome a quiet 
moment with Emerson in the hurry of 
every day. As dropped needles of Em- 
erson's favorite pine keep the subtle 
fragrance of the tree, so these fragmen- 
tary thoughts have each the individual- 
ity of the great practical idealist. Rich- 
ard Garnett says: "If we tried to sum 
up his message in a phrase, we might 
perhaps find this in Keats's famous 
'Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty;' only, 
while Keats was evidently more con- 
cerned for Beauty than for Truth, Emer- 
son held an impartial balance. These 
are with him the tests of each other: 
whatever is really true is also beautiful, 
whatever is really beautiful is also true." 

M. B. S. 



JANUARY. 



January ist. 

The world exists for the education of 
each man. 

History. 

What your heart thinks great, is great. 
The soul's emphasis is always right. 

Spiritual Laws. 

That which befits us, embosomed in 
beauty and wonder as we are, is cheer- 
fulness and courage, and the endeavor to 
realize our aspirations. 

New England Reformers. 

For it is only the finite that has 
wrought and suffered; the infinite lies 
stretched in smiling repose. 

Spiritual Laws. 



BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 



January 2d. 
Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to 
that iron string. Accept the place the 
divine providence has found for you, the 
society of your contemporaries, the con- 
nection of events. Great men have al- 
ways done so, and confided themselves 
childlike to the genius of their age, be- 
traying their perception that the Eternal 
was stirring at their heart, working 
through their hands, predominating in 
all their being. And we are now men, 
and must accept in the highest mind the 
same transcendent destiny; and not 
pinched in a corner, not cowards fleeing 
before a revolution, but redeemers and 
benefactors, pious aspirants to be noble 
clay under the Almighty effort let us ad- 
vance on Chaos and the Dark. 

Self- Reliance. 



FROM EMERSON. 



January 3d. 

Love's hearts are faithful, but not fond, 
Bound for the just, but not beyond; 
Not glad, as the low-loving herd, 
Of self in others still preferred, 
But they have heartily designed 
The benefit of broad mankind. 
And they serve men austerely, 
After their own genius, clearly, 
Without a false humility; 
For this is love's nobility, 
Not to scatter bread and gold, 
Goods and raiment bought and sold, 
But to hold fast his simple sense, 
And speak the speech of innocence, 
And with hand, and body, and blood, 
To make his bosom-counsel good: 
For he that feeds men, serveth few, 
He serves all, who dares be true. 

Celestial Love. 



10 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

January 4th. 
In happy hours, nature appears to us 
one with art; art perfected, — the work 
of genius. And the individual in whom 
simple tastes and susceptibility to all the 
great human influences overpowers the 
accidents of a local and special culture, is 
the best critic of art. Though we travel 
the world over to find the beautiful, we 
must carry it with us, or we find it not. 
The best of beauty is a finer charm than 
skill in surfaces, in outlines, or rules of 
art can ever teach, namely a radiation 
from the work of art, of human charac- 
ter, — a wonderful expression through 
stone, or canvas, or musical sound, of 
the deepest and simplest attributes of our 
nature, and therefore most intelligible at 
last to those souls which have these at- 
tributes. Art. 



FROM EMERSON. 11 

January 5th. 
I am certified of a common nature; 
and so these other souls, these separated 
selves, draw me as nothing else can. 

The Over-Soul. 

When I have attempted to join myself 
to others by services, it proved an intel- 
lectual trick, — no more. They eat your 
service like apples, and leave you out. 
But love them, and they feel you, and 
delight in you all the time. 

Gifts. 

Love is fabled to be blind, but kind- 
ness is necessary to perception ; love is 
not a hood, but an eye-water. 

Prudence. 

January 6ih. 
Great men or men of great gifts you 
shall easily find, but symmetrical men 
never. 

Nominalist and Realist. 



12 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

A man is like a bit of Labrador spar, 
which has no lustre as you turn it in 
your hand, until you come to a particular 
angle; then it shows deep and beautiful 
colors. 

Experience. 

A man is a golden impossibility. The 
line he must walk is a hair's breadth. 

Ibid. 

Every man is wanted, and no man is 

wanted much. 

Nominalist and Eealist. 

January yth. 

Yet what was the import of this teach- 
ing? What did the preacher mean by 
saying that the good are miserable in the 
present life? Was it that houses and 
lands, offices, wine, horses, dress, lux- 
ury, are had by unprincipled men, whilst 



FROM EMERSON. 13 

the saints are poor and despised; and 
that a compensation is to be made to 
these last hereafter, by giving them the 
like gratifications another day, — bank- 
stock and doubloons, venison and cham- 
pagne ? This must be the compensation 
intended; for what else ? Is it that they 
are to have leave to pray and praise ? to 
love and serve men ? Why, that they 
can do now. The legitimate inference 
the disciple would draw was, "We are 
to have such a good time as the sinners 
have now " ; — or, to push it to its extreme 
import, — " You sin now, we shall sin by 
and by; we would sin now, if we could; 
not being successful we expect our re- 
venge to-morrow." 

The fallacy lay in the immense conces- 
sion that the bad are successful; that 
justice is not done now. The blindness 



14 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

of the preacher consisted in deferring to 
the base estimate of the market of what 
constitutes a manly success, instead of 
confronting and convicting the world 
from the truth; announcing the Presence 
of the Soul ; the omnipotence of the Will ; 
and so establishing the standard of good 
and ill, of success and falsehood, and 
summoning the dead to its present tri- 
bunal. 

Compensation. 

January 8th. 

Why need I volumes, if one word suf- 
fice? 

Why need I galleries, when a pupil's 
draught 

After the master's sketch, fills and o'er- 
fills 

My apprehension ? Why should I roam, 

Who cannot circumnavigate the sea 



FROM EMERSON. 15 

Of thoughts and things at home, but still 

adjourn 
The nearest matters to another moon ? 
Why see new men 
Who have not understood the old ? 

The Day's Ration. 

January pth. 

We can seldom go erect. Almost 
every man we meet requires some civility, 
requires to be humored. 

Friendship. 

He who knows that power is in the 
soul, that he is weak only because he has 
looked for good out of him and else- 
where, and, so perceiving, throws him- 
self unhesitatingly on his thought, in- 
stantly rights himself, stands in the erect 
position, commands his limbs, works 
miracles; just as a man who stands on 



16 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

his feet is stronger than a man who stands 
on his head. 

Self- Reliance. 

This perpendicularity we demand of 
all the figures in this picture of life. Let 
them stand on their feet, and not float 
and swing. Let us know where to find 
them. Let them discriminate between 
what they remember and what they 
dreamed. Let them call a spade a spade. 
Let them give us facts, and honor their 
own senses with trust. 

Prudence. 

January ioth. 
The higher the style we demand of 
friendship, of course the less easy to es- 
tablish it with flesh and blood. We 
walk alone in the world. Friends such 
as we desire are dreams and fables. But 
a sublime hope cheers ever the faithful 



FROM EMERSON. 17 



heart, that elsewhere, in other regions of 
the universal power, souls are now act- 
ing, enduring and daring, which can love 
us and which we can love. We may 
congratulate ourselves that the period of 
nonage, of follies, of blunders and of 
shame, is passed in solitude, and when 
we are finished men we shall grasp heroic 
hands in heroic hands. Only be admon- 
ished by what you already see, not to 
strike leagues of friendship with cheap 
persons, where no friendship can be. 
Our impatience betrays us into rash and 
foolish alliances which no God attends. 
By persisting in your path, though you 
forfeit the little you gain the great. 

Friendship. 

January nth. 
Friendship requires that rare mean be- 
twixt likeness and unlikeness that piques 



18 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

each with the presence of power and of 
consent in the other party. 

Friendship. • 

Let it be an alliance of two large, 
formidable natures, mutually beheld, 
mutually feared, before yet they recog- 
nize the deep identity which, beneath 

these disparities, unites them. 

Ibid. 

We talk of choosing our friends, but 

friends are self-elected. Reverence is a 

great part of it. 

Ibid. 

My friends have come to me unsought. 

The great God gave them to me. 

Ibid. 

January 12th. 
Time dissipates to shining ether the 
solid angularity of facts. No anchor, no 
cable, no fences avail to keep a fact a 

fact. History. 



FROM EMERSON. 19 

There are no fixtures in nature. The 
universe is fluid and volatile. Perma- 
nence is but a word of degrees. Our 
globe seen by God is a transparent law, 
not a mass of facts. . . . Permanence 
is a word of degrees. Everything is 
medial. Moons are no more boundsto 

spiritual power than bat-balls. 

Circles. 

There are no fixtures to men, if we 
appeal to consciousness. Every man 
supposes himself not to be fully under- 
stood; and if there is any truth in him, 
if he rests at last on the divine soul, I see 
not how it can be otherwise. The last 
chamber, the last closet, he must feel 
was never opened; there is always a 
residuum unknown, unanalyzable. That 
is, every man believes that he has a 
greater possibility. iua. 



20 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

January i}th. 
There is a time in every man's educa- 
tion when he arrives at the conviction 
that envy is ignorance; that imitation is 
suicide; that he must take himself for 
better for worse as his portion; that 
though the wide universe is full of good, 
no kernel of nourishing corn can come 
to him but through his toil bestowed on 
that plot of ground which is given to 
him to till. The power which resides in 
him is new in nature, and none but he 
knows what that is which he can do, 
nor does he know until he has tried. 
Not for nothing one face, one character, 
one fact, makes much impression on 
him, and another none. It is not with- 
out preestablished harmony, this sculp- 
ture in the memory. The eye was 
placed where one ray should fall, that it 



FR03I EMERSON. 21 

might testify of that particular ray. 
Bravely let him speak the utmost syllable 
of his confession. We but half express 
ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine 
idea which each of us represents. It 
may be safely trusted as proportionate 
and of good issues, so it be faithfully 
imparted, but God will not have His 
work made manifest by cowards. It 
needs a divine man to exhibit anything 
divine. 

Self- Reliance. 

January 14th. 

A little consideration of what takes 
place around us every day would show 
us that a higher law than that of our will 
regulates events; that our painful labors 
are very unnecessary and altogether fruit- 
less; that only in our easy, simple, 



22 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

spontaneous action are we strong, and 
by contenting ourselves with obedience 
we become divine. Belief and love, — a 
believing we love will relieve us of a 
vast load of care. O my brothers, God 
exists. There is a soul at the centre 
of nature and over the will of every 
man, so that none of us can wrong 
the universe. It has so infused its 
strong enchantment into nature that 
we prosper when we accept its advice, 
and when we struggle to wound its 
creatures our hands are glued to our 
sides, or they beat our own breasts. 
1 he whole course of things goes to 
teach us faith. We need only obey. 
There is a guidance for each of us, and 
by lowly listening we shall hear the right 
word. 

Spiritual Laws. 



FROM EMERSON. 23 

January 15th. 

We must hold a man amenable to rea- 
son for the choice of his daily craft or 
profession. It is not an excuse any 
longer for his deeds that they are the 
custom of his trade. What business has 
he with an evil trade? Has he not a 
calling in his character ? 

Each man has his own vocation. The 
talent is the call. There is one direction 
in which all space is open to him. He 
has faculties silently inviting him thither 
to endless exertion. He is like a ship in 
a river; he runs against obstructions on 
every side but one; on that side all ob- 
struction is taken away and he sweeps 
serenely over God's depths into an in- 
finite sea. 

***** 

The common experience is that the 



24 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

man fits himself as well as he can to the 
customary details oi that work or trade 
he falls into, and tends it as a dog turns 
a spit. Then he is a part of the machine 
he moves; the man is lost. Until he can 
manage to communicate himself to oth- 
ers in his full stature and proportion as a 
wise and good man, he does not yet find 
his vocation. He must find in that an 
outlet for his character, so that he may 
justify himself to their eyes for doing 
what he does. If the labor is trivial, let 
him by his thinking and character make 

it liberal. 

Spiritual Laws. 

January 16th. 

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin 
of little minds, adored by little statesmen 
and philosophers and divines. With 



FROM EMERSON. 25 

consistency a great soul has simply 
nothing to do. He may as well concern 
himself with his shadow on the wall. 
Out upon your guarded lips! Sew 
them up with packthread, do. Else if 
you would be a man speak what you 
think to-day in words as hard as cannon 
balls, and to-morrow speak what to- 
morrow thinks in hard words again, 
though it contradict everything you said 
to-day. Ah, then, exclaim the aged 
ladies, you shall be sure to be misunder- 
stood! Misunderstood! It is a right 
fool's word. Is it so bad then to be 
misunderstood? Pythagoras was mis- 
understood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and 
Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and 
Newton, and every pure and wise spirit 
that ever took flesh. To be great is to 

be misunderstood. Self-Reliance. 



26 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

January lyth. 
As the overhanging trees 
Fill the lake with images, 
As garment draws the garment's hem 
Men their fortunes bring with them; 
By right or wrong, 
Lands and goods go to the strong; 
Property will brutely draw 
Still to the proprietor, 
Silver to silver creep and wind, 
And kind to kind, 
Nor less the eternal poles 
Of tendency distribute souls. 
There need no vows to bind 
Whom not each other seek but find. 
They give and take no pledge or oath, 
Nature is the bond of both. 

Celestial Love. 



FROM E31ERS0N. 27 



January 18th. 
Where do we find ourselves? In a 
series of which we do not know the ex- 
tremes, and believe that it has none. 
We wake and find ourselves on a stair; 
there are stairs below us, which we seem 
to have ascended; there are stairs above 
us, many a one, which go upward and 

OUt Of Sight. Experience. 

Life is a series of surprises, and would 
not be worth taking or keeping, if it 
were not. God delights to isolate us 
every day, and hide from us the past and 
the future. m dt 

January ipth. 

God offers to every mind its choice be- 
tween truth and repose. Take which 
you please, — you can never have both. 
Between these, as a pendulum, man 
oscillates. He in whom the love of re- 



28 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

pose predominates will accept the first 
creed, the first philosophy, the first polit- 
ical party he meets, — most likely his fa- 
ther's. He gets rest, commodity and 
reputation; but he shuts the door of 
truth. He in whom the love of truth 
predominates will keep himself aloof 
from all moorings, and afloat. He will 
abstain from dogmatism, and recognize 
all the opposite negations between 
which, as walls, his being is swung. 
He submits to the inconvenience of sus- 
pense and imperfect opinion, but he is a 
candidate for truth, as the other is not, 
and respects the highest law of his 
being. Intellect. 

January 20th. 

You admire this tower of granite, 
weathering the hurts of so many ages. 



FE03I EMERSON. 29 

Yet a little waving hand built this huge 
wall, and that which builds is better than 
that which is built. The hand that built 
can topple it down much faster. Better 
than the hand and nimbler was the in- 
visible thought which wrought through 
it; and thus ever, behind the coarse 
effect, is a fine cause, which, being nar- 
rowly seen, is itself the effect of a finer 
cause. Everything looks permanent un- 
til its secret is known. 

Circles. 



Every ultimate fact is only the first of 
a new series. Every general law only a 
particular fact of some more general law 
presently to disclose itself. There is no 
outside, no inclosing wall, no circumfer- 
ence to us. 

Ibid. 



30 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

January 21st. 

A man's growth is seen in the succes- 
sive choirs of his friends. For every 
friend whom he loses for truth, he gains 
a better. Circles. 

Ever the step backward from the 
higher to the lower relations is impossi- 
ble. Thus even love, which is the deifi- 
cation of persons, must become more 

impersonal every day. 

Love. 

We cannot part with our friends. We 
cannot let our angels go. We do not 
see that they only go out that archangels 
may come in. 

Compensation. 

January 22d. 
Let a man keep the law,— any law, — 
and his way will be strown with satis- 
factions. Prudence. 



FROM EMERSON. 31 

Thus truth, frankness, courage, love, 
humility and all the virtues range them- 
selves on the side of prudence, or the 
art of securing a present well-being. 
I do not know if all matter will be 
found to be made of one element, as 
oxygen or hydrogen, at last, but the 
world of manners and actions is wrought 
of one stuff, and begin where we 
will we are pretty sure in a short 
space to be mumbling our ten com- 
mandments. 

Ibid. 

January 23d. 

Higher far, 

Upward, into the pure realm, 

Over sun or star, 

Over the flickering Daemon film, 

Thou must mount for love, — 



32 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

Into vision which all form 
In one only form dissolves; 

sjc ^c !J» »j* *l» 

Where unlike things are like, 
When good and ill, 
And joy and moan, 
Melt into one. 

There Past, Present, Future, shoot 
Triple blossoms from one root. 
Substances at base divided, 
In their summits are united, 
There the holy Essence rolls, 
One through separated souls, 
And the sunny j*Eon sleeps, 
Folding nature in its deeps, 
And every fair and every good 
Known in part or known impure 
To men below, 
In their archetypes endure. 

Celestial Love. 



FROM EMERSON. 33 

January 24th. 
Single look has drained the breast, 
Single moment years confessed. 

The Visit. 

I was by thy touch redeemed; 
When thy meteor glances came, 
We talked at large of worldly Fate, 
And drew truly every trait. 
Once I dwelt apart, 
Now I live with all; 
As shepherd's lamp on far hillside, 
Seems, by the traveler espied, 
A door into the mountain heart, 
So didst thou quarry and unlock 
Highways for me through the rock. 

Hormone. 

January 25th. 
We have no pleasure in thinking of a 
benevolence that is only measured by its 



34 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

works. Love is inexhaustible, and if its 
estate is wasted, its granary emptied, 
still cheers and enriches, and the man, 
though he sleep, seems to purify the air, 
and his house to adorn the landscape and 
strengthen the laws. People always rec- 
ognize this difference. We know who 
is benevolent, by quite other means than 
the amount of subscription to soup-socie- 
ties. It is only low merits that can be 
enumerated. 



The longest list of specifications of 
benefit, would look very short. A man 
is a poor creature, if he is to be measured 
so. For, all these, of course, are excep- 
tions; and the rule and hodiernal life of 
a good man is benefaction. 

Character. 



FROM EMERSON. 35 

January 26th. 
The world is filled with the proverbs 
and acts and winkings of a base pru- 
dence, which is a devotion to matter, as 
if we possessed no other faculties than 
the palate, the nose, the touch, the eye 
and ear; a prudence which adores the 
Rule of Three, which never subscribes, 
which gives never, which seldom lends, 
and asks but one question of any project, 
— Will it bake bread ? This is a disease 
like a thickening of the skin "until the 
vital organs are destroyed. 



If a man lose his balance and immerse 
himself in any trades or pleasures for 
their own sake, he may be a good wheel 
or pin, but he is not a cultivated man. 

Prudence. 



36 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

January 2jth. 
When the old world is sterile, 
And the ages are effete, 
He will from wrecks and sediment 
The fairer world complete. 
He forbids to despair, 
His cheeks mantle with mirth, 
And the unimagined good of men 
Is yearning at the birth. 

The World-Soul. 

Silent rushes the swift Lord 
Through ruined systems still restored, 
Broad-sowing, bleak and void to bless, 
Plants with worlds the wilderness, 
Waters with tears of ancient sorrow 
Apples of Eden ripe to-morrow; 
House and tenant go to ground, 
Lost in God, in Godhead found. 

Threnody. 



FROM EMERSON. 37 

January 28th. 

There are degrees in idealism. We 
learn first to play with it academically, 
as the magnet was once a toy. Then 
we see in the heyday of youth and poetry 
that it may be true, that it is true in 
gleams and fragments. Then, its coun- 
tenance waxes stern and grand, and we 
see that it must be true. It now shows 
itself ethical and practical. 

Circles. 



Thus journeys the mighty Ideal before 
us; it never was known to fall into the 
rear. No man ever came to an ex- 
perience which was satiating, but his 
good is tidings of a better. Onward and 
onward! 

Experience. 



38 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

January 29th. 
But, critic, spare thy vanity, 
Nor show thy pompous parts, 
To vex with odious subtlety 
The cheerer of men's hearts. 

Saadi. 

Life is too short to waste 

The critic bite or cynic bark, 

Quarrel, or reprimand ; 

'Twill soon be dark; 

Up! mind thine own aim, and 

God speed the mark. 

To J. W. 

January joth. 
The Sphinx is drowsy, 
Her wings are furled, 
Her ear is heavy, 
She broods on the world. — 
\* Who'll tell me my secret 
The ages have kept ? 



FROM EMERSON. 39 

— I awaited the seer, 

While they slumbered and slept;— 

The fate of the manchild, 
The meaning of man; 
Known fruit of the unknown, 
Daedalian plan; 
Out of sleeping a waking, 
Out of waking a sleep, 
Life death overtaking, 
Deep underneath deep." 

The Sphinx. 

This human mind wrote history, and 
this must read it. The Sphinx must 
solve her own riddle. If the whole of 
history is in one man, it is all to be 
explained from individual experience. 
There is a relation between the hours of 
our life and the centuries of time. 

History. 



40 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

January jist. 
As soon as a man is wonted to look 
beyond surfaces, and to see how this 
high will prevails without an exception 
or an interval, he settles himself into 
serenity. He can already rely on the 
laws of gravity, that every stone will 
fall where it is due; the good globe is 
faithful, and carries us securely through 
the celestial spaces, anxious or resigned: 
we need not interfere to help it on, and 
he will learn, one day, the mild lesson 
they teach, that our own orbit is all our 
task, and we need not assist the admin- 
istration of the universe. 

New England Reformers. 

"A few strong instincts and a few 
plain rules " suffice us. 

Spiritual Laws. 



FEBRUARY. 



February ist 

Announced by all the trumpets of the 
sky 

Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the 
fields, 

Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air 

Hides hills and woods, the river and the 
heaven, 

And veils the farmhouse at the garden's 
end. 

The steed and traveler stopped, the 
courier's feet 

Delayed, all friends shut out, the house- 
mates sit 

Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed 

In a tumultuous privacy of storm. 

Come, see the north wind's 
masonry. 

43 



44 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

Out of an unseen quarry evermore 
Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer 
Curves his white bastions with projected 

roof 
Round every windward stake, or tree, or 

door. 



And when his hours are numbered, and 
the world 

Is all his own, retiring, as he were not, 

Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished 
Art 

To mimic in slow structures, stone by 
stone 

Built in an age, the mad wind's night- 
work, 

The frolic architecture of the snow. 

The Snow-Storm. 



FROM EMERSON. 45 

February 2d. 

There is no great and no small 
To the Soul that maketh all : 
And where it cometh, all things are ; 
And it cometh everywhere. 



There is one mind common to all 
individual men. Every man is an inlet 
to the same and to all of the same. He 
that is once admitted to the right of rea- 
son is made a freeman of the whole 
estate. What Plato has thought, he 
may think; what a saint has felt, he 
may feel; what at any time has befallen 
any man, he can understand. Who hath 
access to this universal mind is a party 
to all that is or can be done, for this is 
the only and sovereign agent. 

History. 



46 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

February 3d. 
Proverbs, like the sacred books of each 
nation, are the sanctuary of the Intui- 
tions. 

All things are double, one against an- 
other. — Tit for tat; an eye for an eye; a 
tooth for a tooth; blood for blood; meas- 
ure for measure; love for love. — Give, 
and it shall be given you. — He that wa- 
tereth shall be watered himself. — What 
will you have? quoth God; pay for it 
and take it. — Nothing venture, nothing 
have. — Thou shalt be paid exactly for 
what thou hast done, no more, no less. 
— Who doth not work shall not eat. — 
Harm watch, harm catch. — Curses always 
recoil on the head of him who imprecates 
them. — If you put a chain around the 
neck of a slave, the other end fastens 



FROM EMERSON. 47 

itself around your own. — Bad counsel 
confounds the adviser. — The devil is an 
ass. 

It is thus written, because it is thus in 
life. 

Compensation. 

February 4th. 
The same dualism underlies the nature 
and condition of man. Every excess 
causes a defect; every defect an excess. 
Every sweet hath -its sour; every evil its 
good. Every faculty which is a receiver 
of pleasure has an equal penalty put on 
its abuse. It is to answer for its moder- 
ation with its life. For every grain of 
wit there is a grain of folly. For every- 
thing you have missed, you have gained 
something else; and for everything you 
gain, you lose something. If riches in- 
crease, they are increased that use them. 



48 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

If the gatherer gathers too much, nature 
takes out of the man what she puts into 
his chest; swells the estate, but kills the 
owner. Nature hates monopolies and 
exceptions. The waves of the sea 
do not more speedily seek a level from 
their loftiest tossing than the varieties of 
condition tend to equalize themselves. 
There is always some leveling circum- 
stance that puts down the overbearing, 
the strong, the rich, the fortunate, sub- 
stantially on the same ground with all 
others. 

Compensation. 

February 5th. 
Life only avails, not the having lived. 

Self- Reliance. 

Wisdom will never let us stand with 
any man or men on an unfriendly foot- 



FROM EMERSON. 49 

ing. We refuse sympathy and intimacy 
with people, as if we waited for some 
better sympathy and intimacy to come. 
But whence and when ? To-morrow 
will be like to-day. Life wastes itself 
whilst we are preparing to live. 

Prudence. 

We know that the secret of the world 
is profound, but who or what shall be 
our interpreter, we know not. A moun- 
tain ramble, a new style of face, a new 
person, may put the key into our hands. 

The Poet. 

February 6th. 
The Gracchi, Agis, Cleomenes, and 
others of Plutarch's heroes, do not in the 
record of facts equal their own fame. 
Sir Philip Sidney, the Earl of Essex, Sir 
Walter Raleigh, are men of great figure, 



50 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

and of few deeds. We cannot find the 
smallest part of the personal weight of 
Washington, in the narrative of his ex- 
ploits. The authority of the name of 
Schiller is too great for his books. 
This inequality of the reputation to the 
works or the anecdotes, is not accounted 
for by saying that the reverberation is 
longer than the thunder-clap; but some- 
what resided in these men which begot 
an expectation that outran all their per- 
formance. The largest part of their 
power was latent. This is that which 
we call Character, — a reserved force 
which acts directly by presence, and 
without means. 

Character. 

February yth. 
Not from a vain or shallow thought 
His awful Jove young Phidias brought; 



FROM EMERSON. 51 

Never from lips of cunning fell 

The thrilling Delphic oracle; 

Out from the heart of nature rolled 

The burdens of the Bible old; 

The litanies of nations came, 

Like the volcano's tongue of flame, 

Up from the burning core below, 

The canticles of love and woe. 

The hand that rounded Peter's dome, 

And groined the aisles of Christian Rome, 

Wrought in a sad sincerity, 

Himself from God he could not free; 

He builded better than he knew, 

The conscious stone to beauty grew. 

The Problem. 

February 8th. 

The one thing which we seek with in- 
satiable desire is to forget ourselves, to 
be surprised out of our propriety, to lose 



52 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

our sempiternal memory and to do some- 
thing without knowing how or why; in 
short to draw a new circle. Nothing 
great was ever achieved without enthu- 
siasm. The way of life is wonderful. It 
is by abandonment. The great moments 
of history are the facilities of perform- 
ance through the strength of ideas, as 
the works of genius and religion. "A 
man," said Oliver Cromwell, "never 
rises so high as when he knows not 
whither he is going." 

Circles. 

February gth. 
The characteristic of genuine heroism 
is its persistency. All men have wan- 
dering impulses, fits and starts of gener- 
osity. But when you have resolved to 
be great, abide by yourself, and do not 
weakly try to reconcile yourself with the 



FROM EMERSON. 53 

world. The heroic cannot be the com- 
mon, nor the common the heroic. Yet 
we have the weakness to expect the 
sympathy of people in those actions 
whose excellence is that they outrun 
sympathy and appeal to a tardy justice. 
If you would serve your brother, be- 
cause it is fit for you to serve him, do 
not take back your words when you find 
that prudent people do not commend 
you. Be true to your own act. 

Heroism. 

February ioth. 

If any of us knew what we were do- 
ing or where we are going, then when 
we think we best know ! We do not 
know to-day whether we are busy or 
idle. In times when we thought our- 
selves indolent we have afterwards dis- 



54 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

covered, that much was accomplished, 
and much was begun in us. 

Experience. 

The results of life are uncalculated 

and uncalculable. The years teach much 

which the days never know. 

Ibid. 

February nth. 
Let us, if we must have great actions, 
make our own so. All action is of an 
infinite elasticity, and the least admits of 
being inflated with the celestial air until 
it eclipses the sun and moon. Let us 
seek one peace by fidelity. Let me do 
my duties. Why need I go gadding 
into the scenes and philosophy of Greek 
and Italian history before I have washed 
my own face or justified myself to my 
benefactors? How dare I read Wash- 
ington's campaigns when I have not an- 



FROM EMERSON. 55 

swered the letters of my own corre- 
spondents ? Is not that a just objection 
to much of our reading ? It is a pusil- 
lanimous desertion of our work to gaze 
after our neighbors. It is peeping. 
Byron says of Jack Bunting, 

He knew not what to say, and so he swore. 

I may say it of our preposterous use of 
books. He knew not what to do, and 
so he read. 

Spiritual Laws. 

February 12th. 
I do not wish to treat friendships 
daintily, but with roughest courage. 
When they are real, they are not glass 
threads or frost-work, but the solidest 
thing we know. For now, after so 
many ages of experience, what do we 
know of nature or of ourselves? Not 



56 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

one step has man taken towards the so- 
lution of the problem of his destiny. In 
one condemnation of folly stand the 
whole universe of men. But the sweet 
sincerity of joy and peace which I draw 
from this alliance with my brother's soul 
is the nut itself whereof all nature and 
all thought is but the husk and shell. 

Friendship. 

Our friendships hurry to short and 
poor conclusions, because we have made 
them a texture of wine and dreams, in- 
stead of the tough fibre of the human 
heart. The laws of friendship are great, 
austere and eternal, of one web with the 
laws of nature and of morals. ma. 

February 13th. 
The heart has its sabbaths and jubi- 
lees in which the world appears as a hy- 
meneal feast, and all natural sounds and 



FROM EMERSON. 57 

the circle of the seasons are erotic odes 
and dances. Love is omnipresent in na- 
ture as motive and reward. Love is our 
highest word and the synonym of God. 

Every promise of the soul has innu- 
merable fulfilments ; each of its joys 
ripens into a new want. Nature, un- 
containable, flowing, forelooking, in the 
first sentiment of kindness anticipates 
already a benevolence which shall lose 
all particular regards in its general light. 
The introduction to this felicity is in a 
private and tender relation of one to 
one, which is the enchantment of human 
life ; which, like a certain divine rage 
and enthusiasm, seizes on man at one 
period and works a revolution in his 
mind and body ; unites him to his race, 
pledges him to the domestic and civic 
relations, carries him with new sympa- 



58 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

thy into nature, enhances the power of 
the senses, opens the imagination, adds 
to his character heroic and sacred attri- 
butes, establishes marriage and gives 
permanence to human society. Love. 

February 14th. 

Cupid is a casuist. 

A mystic, and a cabalist, 

Can your lurking Thought surprise, 

And interpret your device; 

Mainly versed in occult science, 

In magic, and in clairvoyance. 

Initial Love. 

The sense of the world is short, 
Long and various the report, — 
To love and be beloved; 
Men and gods have not outlearned it, 
And how oft soe'er they've turned it, 
'Tis not to be improved. Eros. 



FROM EMERSON. 59 

February 15th. 

Give all to love; 
Obey thy heart; 
Friends, kindred, days, 
Estate, good fame, 
Plans, credit, and the muse ; 
Nothing refuse. 



Tis a brave master, 
Let it have scope, 
Follow it utterly, 
Hope beyond hope; 
High and more high, 
It dives into noon, 
With wing unspent, 
Untold intent; 
But 'tis a god, 
Knows its own path, 
And the outlets of the sky. 



60 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

Tis not for the mean, 
It requireth courage stout, 
Souls above doubt, 
Valor unbending; 
Such 'twill reward, 
They shall return 
More than they were, 
And ever ascending. 

Give All to Love. 

February 16th. 
The erring painter made Love blind, 
Highest Love who shines on all; 
Him radiant, sharpest-sighted god 
None can bewilder; 
Whose eyes pierce 
The Universe, 
Path-finder, road-builder, 
Mediator, royal giver, 
Rightly-seeing, rightly-seen, 
Of joyful and transparent mien. 



FROM EMERSON. 61 

Tis a sparkle passing 

From each to each, from me to thee, 

Perpetually, 

Sharing all, daring all, 

Leveling, misplacing 

Each obstruction, it unites 

Equals remote, and seeming opposites. 

Daemonic Love. 

February iyth. 

The end of friendship is a commerce 
the most strict and homely that can be 
joined; more strict than any of which we 
have experienced. It is for aid and com- 
fort through all the relations and pas- 
sages of life and death. It is fit for serene 
days and graceful gifts and country ram- 
bles, but also for rough roads and hard 
fare, shipwreck, poverty and persecu- 
tion. It keeps company with the sallies 



62 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

of the wit and the trances of religion. 
We are to dignify to each other the daily 
needs and offices of man's life, and em- 
bellish it by courage, wisdom and unity. 
It should never fall into something usual 
and settled, but should be alert and in- 
ventive and add rhyme and reason to 
what was drudgery. 

Friendship. 

February 18th. 
Well, most men have bound their eyes 
with one or another handkerchief, and 
attached themselves to some one of these 
communities of opinion. This conform- 
ity makes them not false in a few par- 
ticulars, authors of a few lies, but false 
in all particulars. Their every truth is 
not quite true. Their two is not the real 
two, their four not the real four: so that 
every word they say chagrins us and we 



FROM EMERSON. 63 

know not where to begin to set them 
right. Meantime nature is not slow to 
equip us in the prison-uniform of the 
party to which we adhere. We come to 
wear one cut of face and figure, and ac- 
quire by degrees the gentlest asinine ex- 
pression. 

Self- Reliance. 

Give me truths, 

For I am weary of the surfaces, 

And die of inanition. 

Blight. 

February 19th. 

Life is not worth the taking, to do 
tricks in. 

Experience. 

For nature, who abhors mannerism, 
has set her heart on breaking up all styles 
and tricks, and it is so much easier to do 
what one has done before, than to do a 



64 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

new thing, that there is a perpetual tend- 
ency to a set mode. In every conversa- 
tion, even the highest, there is a certain 
trick, which may be soon learned by an 
acute person, and then that particular 
style continued indefinitely. Each man, 
too, is a tyrant in tendency, because he 
would impose his idea on others; and 
their trick is their natural defense. 

Nominalist and Realist. 

February 20th. 
But the quality of the imagination is to 

flow, and not to freeze. 

The Poet. 

Wilt thou freeze love's tidal flow, 
Whose streams through nature circling 

go? 
Nail the star struggling to its track 
On the half-climbed Zodiack ? 



FROM EMERSON. 65 

Light is light which radiates, 
Blood is blood which circulates, 
Life is life which generates, 
And many-seeming life is one, — 
Wilt thou transfix and make it none, 
Its onward stream too starkly pent 
In figure, bone, and lineament ? 

Writ thou uncalled interrogate, 

Talker! the unreplying fate ? 

Threnody. 

February 21st. 
Every man's nature is a sufficient ad- 
vertisement to him of the character of 
his fellows. My right and my wrong, is 
their right and their wrong. Whilst I do 
what is fit for me, and abstain from what 
is unfit, my neighbor and I shall often 
agree in our means, and work together 
for a time to one end. But whenever I 



66 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

find my dominion over myself not suffi- 
cient for me, and undertake the direction 
of him also, I overstep the truth, and 
come into false relations to him. I may 
have so much more skill or strength 
than he, that he cannot express ade- 
quately his sense of wrong, but it is a 
lie, and hurts like a lie both him and me. 
Love and nature cannot maintain the 
assumption: it must be executed by a 
practical lie, namely, by force. This 
undertaking for another, is the blunder 
which stands in colossal ugliness in the 
governments of the world. 

Politics. 

February 22d. 

Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your 
own gift you can present every moment 
with the cumulative force of a whole 



FROM EMERSON. 67 

life's cultivation ; but of the adopted talent 
of another you have only an extempo- 
raneous half possession. That which 
each can do best, none but his Maker 
can teach him. No man yet knows 
what it is, nor can, till that person has 
exhibited it. Where is the master who 
could have taught Shakespeare ? Where 
is the master who could have instructed 
Franklin, or Washington, or Bacon, or 
Newton ? Every great man is an unique. 

Self-Eeliance. 

The force of character is cumulative. 
All the foregone days of virtue work 
their health into this. What makes the 
majesty of the heroes of the senate and 
the field, which so fills the imagination ? 
The consciousness of a train of great 
days and victories behind. There they 
all stand and shed an united light on the 



68 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

advancing actor. He is attended as by a 

visible escort of angels to every man's 

eye. That is it which throws thunder 

into Chatham's voice, and dignity into 

Washington's port, and America into 

Adams's eye. Honor is venerable to us 

because it is no ephemeris. It is always 

ancient virtue. We worship it to-day 

because it is not of to-day. 

Ibid. 

February 23d. 

In the gloom of our ignorance of what 
shall be, in the hour when we are deaf to 
the higher voices, who does not envy 
them who have seen safely to an end 
their manful endeavor ? Who that sees 
the meanness of our politics but inly 
congratulates Washington that he is 
long already wrapped in his shroud, and 



FROM EMERSON. 69 

forever safe; that he was laid sweet in 
his grave, the hope of humanity not yet 
subjugated in him ? Who does not 
sometimes envy the good and brave 
who are no more to suffer from the 
tumults of the natural world, and await 
with curious complacency the speedy 
term of his own conversation with finite 
nature ? And yet the love that will be 
annihilated sooner than treacherous has 
already made death impossible, and 
affirms itself no mortal but a native of 
the deeps of absolute and inextinguish- 
able being. 

Heroism. 

February 24th. 
The good are befriended even by weak- 
ness and defect. As no man had ever a 
point of pride that was not injurious to 
him, so no man had ever a defect that 



70 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

was not somewhere made useful to him. 
The stag in the fable admired his horns 
and blamed his feet, but when the hunter 
came, his feet saved him, and afterwards, 
caught in the thicket, his horns destroyed 
him. Every man in his lifetime needs to 
thank his faults. As no man thoroughly 
understands a truth until first he has con- 
tended against it, so no man has a 
thorough acquaintance with the hin- 
drances or talents of men until he has 
suffered from the one and seen the 
triumph of the other over his own want 
of the same. Has he a defect of temper 
that unfits him to live in society ? 
Thereby he is driven to entertain him- 
self alone and acquire habits of self- 
help; and thus, like the wounded oyster, 
he mends his shell with pearl. 

Compensation. 



FROM EMERSON. 71 

February 25th. 

He believes that he cannot escape from 
his good. The things that are really for 
thee gravitate to thee. You are running 
to seek your friend. Let your feet run, 
but your mind need not. If you do not 
find him, will you not acquiesce that it 
is best you should not find him ? for 
there is a power, which as it is in you, 
is in him also, and could therefore very 
well bring you together, if it were for 
the best. You are preparing with eager- 
ness to go and render a service to which 
your talent and your taste invite you, the 
love of men and the hope of fame. Has 
it not occurred to you that you have no 
right to go, unless you are equally will- 
ing to be prevented from going ? O, be- 
lieve, as thou livest, that every sound 
that is spoken over the round world, 



72 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

which thou oughtest to hear, will vibrate 
on thine ear. Every proverb, every book, 
every by-word that belongs to thee for 
aid or comfort, shall surely come home 
through open or winding passages. 
Every friend whom not thy fantastic 
will but the great and tender heart in 
thee craveth, shall lock thee in his em- 
brace. 

The Over-Soul. 

February 26th. 
There is an instinctive sense, however 
obscure and yet inarticulate, that the 
whole constitution of property, on its 
present tenures, is injurious, and its in- 
fluence on persons deteriorating and de- 
grading; that truly, the only interest for 
the consideration of the State, is persons; 
that property will always follow persons; 
that the highest end of government is the 



FROM EMERSON. 73 

culture of men : and if men can be edu- 
cated, the institutions will share their im- 
provement, and the moral sentiment will 
write the law of the land. 

Politics. 

We think our civilization near its me- 
ridian, but we are yet only at the cock- 
crowing and the morning star. 

Ibid. 

February 2jth. 
So in this great society wide lying 
around us, a critical analysis would find 
very few spontaneous actions. It is al- 
most all custom and gross sense. There 
are even few opinions, and these seem 
organic in the speakers, and do not dis- 
turb the universal necessity. 

Experience. 

All good conversation, manners, and 
action, come from a spontaneity which 



74 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

forgets usages, and makes the moment 
great. Nature hates calculators; her 
methods are saltatory and impulsive. 

Ibid. 

We love characters in proportion as 
they are impulsive and spontaneous. 
The less a man thinks or knows about 
his virtues the better we like him. 

Spiritual Laws. 

February 28th. 
We are always coming up with the 
facts that have moved us in history in 
our private experience and verifying 
them here. All history becomes subjec- 
tive; in other words, there is properly no 
History, only Biography. Every mind 
must know the whole lesson for itself, — 
must go over the whole ground. What 
it does not see, what it does not live, it 



FE03I EMERSON. 75 

will not know. What the former age 
has epitomized into a formula or rule for 
manipular convenience, it will lose all 
the good of verifying for itself, by means 
of the wall of that rule. Somewhere or 
other, some time or other, it will de- 
mand and find compensation for that 
loss, by doing the work itself. 

History. 

The frank blessings of the hill 
Fall on thee, as fall they will. 
Tis the law of bush and stone — 
Each can only take his own. 

Monadnoc. 



MARCH. 



March ist. 

Mysteries of color daily laid 
By the great sun in light and shade, 
And sweet varieties of chance, 
And the mystic seasons' dance, 
And thief-like step of liberal hours 
Which thawed the snowdrift into 
flowers. 

Monadnoc. 
Heed the old oracles, 
Ponder my spells, 
Song wakes in my pinnacles, 
When the wind swells. 
Soundeth the prophetic wind, 
The shadows shake on the rock behind, 
And the countless leaves of the pine are 
strings 

Tuned to the lay the wood-god sings. 
79 



80 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

Hearken! hearken! 

If thou wouldst know the mystic song 

Chanted when the sphere was young, 

Aloft, abroad, the paean swells, 

O wise man, hear'st thou half it tells ? 

wise man, hear'st thou the least part ? 

Wood Notes. 

March 2d. 
Spring still makes spring in the mind, 
When sixty years are told; 
Love wakes anew this throbbing heart, 
And we are never old. 
Over the winter glaciers, 

1 see the summer glow, 

And through the wild-piled snowdrift 
The warm rosebuds below. 

The World-Soul. 

For, is it to be considered that this pas- 
sion of which we speak, though it begin 
with the young, yet forsakes not the old, 



FROM EMERSON. 81 

or rather suffers no one who is truly its 
servant to grow old, but makes the aged 
participators of it not less than the tender 
maiden, though in a different and nobler 
sort. For it is a fire that kindling its first 
embers in the narrow nook of a private 
bosom, caught from a wandering spark 
out of another private heart, glows and 
enlarges until it warms and beams upon 
multitudes of men and women, upon the 
universal heart of all, and so lights up the 
whole world and all nature with its 
generous flames. 



Love. 



March 3d. 

What boots it, thy virtue, 
What profit thy parts, 
While one thing thou lackest, 
The art of all arts ! 



82 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

The only credentials, 
Passport to success, 
Opens castle and parlor, — 
Address, man, Address. 

This clenches the bargain, 
Sails out of the bay, 
Gets the vote in the Senate, 
Spite of Webster and Clay; 

Has for genius no mercy, 
For speeches no heed, — 
It lurks in the eyebeam, 
It leaps to its deed. 

Church, tavern, and market, 
Bed and board it will sway; 
It has no to-morrow, 
It ends with to-day. 

Tact. 



FROM EMERSON. 83 

March 4th. 
Be, and not seem. 

Spiritual Laws. 

To think is to act. 

Ibid. 

The hero fears not that if he withhold 
the avowal of a just and brave act it will 
go unwitnessed and unloved. One 
knows it, himself, — and is pledged by it 
to sweetness of peace and to nobleness of 
aim which will prove in the end a better 
proclamation of it than the relating of the 
incident. Virtue is the adherence in 
action to the nature of things, and the 
nature of things makes it prevalent. It 
consists in a perpetual substitution of 
being for seeming, and with sublime 
propriety God is described as saying, I 
AM. 

Ibid. 



84 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

March 5th. 
When the act of reflection takes place 
in the mind, when we look at ourselves 
in the light of thought, we discover that 
our life is embosomed in beauty. Behind 
us, as we go, all things assume pleasing 
forms, as clouds do far off. Not only 
things familiar and stale, but even the 
tragic and terrible are comely as they take 
their place in the pictures of memory. 
The river-bank, the weed at the water- 
side, the old house, the foolish person, — 
however neglected in the passing, — have 
a grace in the past. Even the corpse that 
has lain in the chambers has added a 
solemn ornament to the house. The soul 
will not know either deformity or pain. 
If in the hours of clear reason we should 
speak the severest truth, we should say 
that we had never made a sacrifice. In 



FROM EMERSON. 85 

these hours the mind seems so great that 
nothing can be taken from us that seems 
much. All loss, all pain, is particular; 
the universe remains to the heart unhurt. 
Distress never, trifles never abate our 
trust. No man ever stated his griefs as 
lightly as he might. Allow for exagger- 
ation in the most patient and sorely 
ridden hack that was ever driven. 

Spiritual Laws. 

March 6th. 

I now require this of all pictures, that 
they domesticate me, not that they dazzle 
me. Pictures must not be too pictur- 
esque. Nothing astonishes men so much 
as common sense and plain dealing. All 
great actions have been simple, and all 
great pictures are. 

The Transfiguration, by Raphael, is an 



86 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

eminent example of this peculiar merit. 
A calm benignant beauty shines over all 
this picture, and goes directly to the heart. 
It seems almost to call you by name. 
The sweet and sublime face of Jesus is 
beyond praise, yet how it disappoints all 
florid expectations! This familiar, 
simple, home-speaking countenance is as 
if one should meet a friend. The knowl- 
edge of picture-dealers has its value, but 
listen not to their criticism when your 
heart is touched by genius. It was not 
painted for them, it was painted for you; 
for such as had eyes capable of being 
touched by simplicity and lofty emotions. 

Art. 

March yth. 

What fact more conspicuous in modern 
history, than the creation of the gentle- 



FROM EMERSON. 87 

man ? Chivalry is that, and loyalty is 
that, and, in English literature, half the 
drama, and all the novels, from Sir 
Philip Sidney to Sir Walter Scott, paint 
this figure. The word gentleman, which, 
like the word Christian, must hereafter 
characterize the present and the few pre- 
ceding centuries, by the importance at- 
tached to it, is a homage to personal and 
incommunicable properties. Frivolous 
and fantastic additions have got asso- 
ciated with the name, but the steady 
interest of mankind in it must be at- 
tributed to the valuable properties which 
it designates. An element which unites 
all the most forcible persons of every 
country; makes them intelligible and 
agreeable to each other, and is somewhat 
so precise, that it is at once felt if an in- 
dividual lack the masonic sign, cannot 



BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 



be any casual product, but must be an 
average result of the character and facul- 
ties universally found in men. 

Manners. 

March 8th. 
Fashion, though in a strange way, 
represents all manly virtue. It is virtue 
gone to seed: it is a kind of posthumous 
honor. It does not often caress the 
great, but the children of the great: it is 
a hall of the Past. It usually sets its face 
against the great of this hour. Great 
men are not commonly in its halls: they 
are absent in the field : they are working, 
not triumphing. Fashion is made up of 
their children; of those, who, through 
the value and virtue of somebody, have 
acquired lustre to their name, marks of 
distinction, means of cultivation and 
generosity, and, in their physical organi- 



FROM EMERSON. 89 

zation, a certain health and excellence, 
which secures to them, if not the highest 
power to work, yet high power to en- 
joy. 

Manners. 

March pth. 

Fine manners show themselves formi- 
dable to the uncultivated man. They are 
a subtler science of defense to parry and 
intimidate; but once matched by the skill 
of the other party, they drop the point of 
the sword, — points and fences disappear, 
and the youth finds himself in a more 
transparent atmosphere, wherein life is a 
less troublesome game, and not a mis- 
understanding rises between the players. 
Manners aim to facilitate life, to get rid 
of impediments, and bring the man pure 
to energize. They aid our dealing and 



90 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

conversation, as a railway aids traveling, 
by getting rid of all avoidable obstructions 
of the road, and leaving nothing to be 
conquered but pure space. These forms 
very soon become fixed, and a fine sense 
of propriety is cultivated with the more 
heed, that it becomes a badge of social 
and civil distinction. Thus grows up 
Fashion, an equivocal semblance, the 
most puissant, the most fantastic and 
frivolous, the most feared and followed, 
and which morals and violence assault in 
vain. 

Manners, 

March ioth. 

In mightier chant I disappear. 
If thou trowest 
How the chemic eddies play 
Pole to pole, and what they say, 



FROM EMERSON. 91 



And that these grey crags 

Not on crags are hung, 

But beads are of a rosary 

On prayer and music strung; 

And, credulous, through the granite 

seeming 
Seest the smile of Reason beaming; 
Can thy style-discerning eye 
The hidden-working Builder spy, 
Who builds, yet makes no chips, no din, 
With hammer soft as sno wflake's flight ; 
Knowest thou this ? 
O pilgrim, wandering not amiss! 
Already my rocks lie light, 
And soon my cone will spin. 
For the world was built in order, 
And the atoms march in tune, 
Rhyme the pipe, and time the warder, 
Cannot forget the sun, the moon. 

Monadnoc. 



92 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

March nih. 
The life of man is a self-evolving 
circle, which, from a ring imperceptibly 
small, rushes on all sides outwards to 
new and larger circles, and that without 
end. The extent to which this gener- 
ation of circles, wheel without wheel, 
will go, depends on the force or truth of 
the individual soul. For it is the inert 
effort of each thought, having formed 
itself into a circular wave of circumstance, 
as for instance an empire, rules of an art, 
a local usage, a religious rite, to heap it- 
self on that ridge and to solidify and hem 
in the life. But if the soul is quick and 
strong it bursts over that boundary on all 
sides and expands another orbit on the 
great deep, which also runs up into a 
high wave, with attempt again to stop 
and to bind. But the heart refuses to be 



FROM E3IERS0N. 93 



imprisoned; in its first and narrowest 
pulses it already tends outward with a 
vast force and to immense and innumer- 
able expansions. 

Circles. 

March 12th. 

We have a great deal more kindness 
than is ever spoken. Maugre all the 
selfishness that chills, like east winds, the 
world, the whole human family is bathed 
with an element of love like a fine ether. 
How many persons we meet in houses, 
whom we scarcely speak to, whom yet 
we honor, and who honor us! How 
many we see in the street, or sit with 
in church, whom, though silently, we 
warmly rejoice to be with! Read the 
language of these wandering eye-beams. 
The heart knoweth. 

The effect of the indulgence of this 



94 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

human affection is a certain cordial ex- 
hilaration. In poetry and in common 
speech the emotions of benevolence and 
complacency which are felt towards 
others are likened to the material effects 
of fire; so swift, or much more swift, 
more active, more cheering, are these 
fine inward irradiations. From the high- 
est degree of passionate love to the lowest 
degree of good will, they make the sweet- 
ness of life. 

Friendship. 

March ijth. 

For poetry is not "Devil's wine," but 
God's wine. It is with this as it is with 
toys. We fill the hands and nurseries of 
our children with all manner of dolls, 
drums, and horses, withdrawing their 
eyes from the plain face and sufficing 



FROM EMERSON. 95 

object of nature, the sun, and moon, the 
animals, the water, and stones, which 
should be their toys. So the poet's habit 
of living should be set on a key so low 
and plain, that the common influences 
should delight him. His cheerfulness 
should be the gift of the sunlight; the 
air should suffice for his inspiration, and 
he should be tipsy with water. That 
spirit which suffices quiet hearts, which 
seems to come forth to such from every 
dry knoll of sere grass, from every pine- 
stump, and half-imbedded stone, on 
which the dull March sun shines, comes 
forth to the poor and hungry, and such 
as are of simple taste. If thou fill thy 
brain with Boston and New York, with 
fashion and covetousness, and wilt 
stimulate thy jaded senses with wine 
and French coffee, thou shalt find no 



96 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

radiance of wisdom in the lonely waste 
of the pine woods. 

The Poet. 

March 14th. 

Pleasant are these jets of affection 
which make a young world for me 
again. Delicious is a just and firm en- 
counter of two, in a thought, in a feel- 
ing. How beautiful, on their approach 
to this beating heart, the steps and forms 
of the gifted and the true! The mo- 
ment we indulge our affections, the earth 
is metamorphosed: there is no winter 
and no night: all tragedies, all ennuis 
vanish, — all duties even; nothing fills 
the proceeding eternity but the forms all 
radiant of beloved persons. Let the soul 
be assured that somewhere in the uni- 
verse it should rejoin its friend, and it 



FE03I E3IEBS0N. 97 

would be content and cheerful alone for 
a thousand years. 

I awoke this morning with devout 
thanksgiving for my friends, the old and 
the new. Shall I not call God the Beau- 
tiful, who daily showeth himself so to 
me in his gifts ? 

Friendship. 

March 15th. 

We do not determine what we will 
think. We only open our senses, clear 
away as we can all obstruction from the 
fact, and suffer the intellect to see. We 
have little control over our thoughts. 
We are the prisoners of ideas. They 
catch us up for moments into their 
heaven and so fully engage us that we 
take no thought for the morrow, gaze 
like children, without an effort to make 



98 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

them our own. By and by we fall out 
of that rapture, bethink us where we 
have been, wljat we have seen, and re- 
peat as truly as we can what we have 
beheld. As far as we can recall these 
ecstasies we carry away in the effaceable 
memory the result, and all men and all 
the ages confirm it. It is called Truth. 
But the moment we cease to report and 
attempt to correct and contrive, it is not 
truth. 

Intellect. 

March 16th. 
If we could have any security against 
moods! If the profoundest prophet 
could be holden to his words, and the 
hearer who is ready to sell all and join 
the crusade, could have any certificate 
that to-morrow his prophet shall not 
unsay his testimony! But the Truth sits 



FROM EMERSON. 99 

veiled there on the Bench, and never in- 
terposes an adamantine syllable; and the 
most sincere and revolutionary doctrine, 
put as if the ark of God were carried for- 
ward some furlongs, and planted there 
for the succor of the world, shall in a 
few weeks be coldly set aside by the 
same speaker, as morbid; "I thought I 
was right, but I was not," — and the 
same immeasurable credulity demanded 
for new audacities. If we were not of 
all opinions! if we did not in any mo- 
ment shift the platform on which we 
stand, and look and speak from another! 
if there could be any regulation, any 
" one-hour-rule," that a man should 
never leave his point of view, without 
sound of trumpet. I am always insin- 
cere, as always knowing there are other 

moods. Nominalist and Realist. 

; L.ofc. 



100 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

March iyth. 
Experienced men of the world know 
very well that it is best to pay scot and 
lot as they go along, and that a man 
often pays dear for a small frugality. 
The borrower runs in his own debt. Has 
a man gained anything who has received 
a hundred favors and rendered none ? 
Has he gained by borrowing, through 
indolence or cunning, his neighbor's 
wares, or horses, or money ? There 
arises on the deed the instant acknowl- 
edgment of benefit on the one part and 
of debt on the other; that is, of superior- 
ity and inferiority. The transaction re- 
mains in the memory of himself and his 
neighbor; and every new transaction 
alters according to its nature their rela- 
tion to each other. He may soon come 
to see that he had better have broken his 



FROM EMERSON. 101 

own bones than to have ridden in his 

neighbor's coach, and that "the highest 

price he can pay for a thing is to ask for 

it." 

Compensation. 

March 18th. 
A wise man will extend this lesson to 
all parts of life, and know that it is al- 
ways the part of prudence to face every 
claimant and pay every just demand on 
your time, your talents, or your heart. 
Always pay; for first or last you must 
pay your entire debt. Persons and events 
may stand for a time between you and 
justice, but it is only a postponement. 
You must pay at last your own debt. If 
you are wise you will dread a prosperity 
which only loads you with more. Bene- 
fit is the end of nature. But for every 
benefit which you receive, a tax is levied. 



102 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

He is great who confers the most bene- 
fits. He is base, — and that is the one 
base thing in the universe, — to receive 
favors and render none. In the order of 
nature we cannot render benefits to those 
from whom we receive them, or only 
seldom. But the benefit we receive must 
be rendered again, line for line, deed for 
deed, cent for cent, to somebody. Be- 
ware of too much good staying in your 
hand. It will fast corrupt and worm 
worms. Pay it away quickly in some 
sort. 

Compensation. 

March igth. 

There is somewhat not philosophical in 
heroism ; there is somewhat not holy in 
it; it seems not to know that other souls 
are of one texture with it; it hath pride; 



FROM EMERSON. 103 

it is the extreme of individual nature. 
Nevertheless we must profoundly revere 
it. There is somewhat in great actions 
which does not allow us to go behind 
them. Heroism feels and never reasons, 
and therefore is always right; and al- 
though a different breeding, different re- 
ligion and greater intellectual activity 
would have modified or even reversed the 
particular action, yet for the hero that 
thing he does is the highest deed, and is 
not open to the censure of philosophers 
or divines. It is the avowal of the un- 
schooled man that he finds a quality in 
him that is negligent of expense, of health, 
of life, of danger, of hatred, of reproach, 
and that he knows that his will is higher 
and more excellent than all actual and all 
possible antagonists. 

Heroism. 



104 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

March 20th. 

In this our talking America, we are 

ruined by our good nature and listening 

on all sides. 

Experience. 

Proportion is almost impossible to hu- 
man beings. There is no one who does 
not exaggerate. In conversation, men 
are encumbered with personality, and 
talk too much. 

Nominalist and Realist. 

March 21st. 
And such I knew, a forest seer, 
A minstrel of the natural year, 
Foreteller of the vernal ides, 
Wise harbinger of spheres and tides, 
A lover true who knew by heart 
Each joy the mountain dales impart; 
It seemed that nature could not raise 
A plant in any secret place, 



FROM EMERSON. 105 

In quaking bog, on snowy hill, 
Beneath the grass that shades the rill, 
Under the snow, between the rocks, 
In damp fields known to bird and fox, 
But he would come in the very hour 
It opened in its virgin bower, 
As if a sunbeam showed the place, 
And tell its long-descended race. 
It seemed as if the breezes brought 

him, 
It seemed as if the sparrows taught 

him, 
As if by secret sight he knew 
Where in far fields the orchis grew. 

Wood Notes. 

March 22d. 

Whilst thus the world will be whole 
and refuses to be disparted, we seek to 
act partially, to sunder, to appropriate; 



106 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

for example, — to gratify the senses we 
sever the pleasure of the senses from the 
needs of the character. The ingenuity 
of man has been dedicated to the solution 
of one problem, — how to detach the 
sensual sweet, the sensual strong, the 
sensual bright, etc., from the moral 
sweet, the moral deep, the moral fair; 
that is, again, to contrive to cut clean off 
this upper surface so thin as to leave it 
bottomless; to get a one end, without an 
other end. The soul says, Eat; the body 
would feast. The soul says, The man 
and woman shall be one flesh and one 
soul ; the body would join the flesh only. 
The soul says, Have dominion over all 
things to the ends of virtue; the body 
would have the power over things to its 
own ends. 

Compensation. 



FROM EMERSON. 107 



March 23d. 
Life invests itself with inevitable con- 
ditions, which the unwise seek to dodge, 
which one and another brags that he does 
not know, brags that they do not touch 
him ;— but the brag is on his lips, the con- 
ditions are in his soul. If he escapes 
them in one part they attack him in 
another more vital part. If he has escaped 
them in form and in the appearance, it is 
because he has resisted his life and fled 
from himself, and the retribution is so 
much death. So signal is the failure of 
all attempts to make this separation of 
the good from the tax, that the experi- 
ment would not be tried, — since to try it 
is to be mad, — but for the circumstance 
that when the disease began in the will, 
of rebellion and separation, the intellect 
is at once infected, so that the man ceases 



108 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

to see God whole in each object, but is 
able to see the sensual allurement of an 
object and not see the sensual hurt; he 
sees the mermaid's head but not the 
dragon's tail, and thinks he can cut off 
that which he would have from that 
which he would not have. 

Compensation. 

March 24th. 
I can see well enough a great difference 
between my setting myself down to self- 
control, and my going to make some- 
body else act after my views: but when 
a quarter of the human race assume to 
tell me what I must do, I may be too 
much disturbed by the circumstance to 
see so clearly the absurdity of their com- 
mand. 

Politics. 

But by the necessity of our constitu- 



FR03T EMERSON. 109 

tion things are ever grouping themselves 
according to higher or more interior 
laws. Neighborhood, size, numbers, 
habits, persons, lose by degrees their 
power over us. Cause and effect, real 
affinities, the longing for harmony be- 
tween the soul and the circumstance, the 
high progressive, idealizing instinct, these 
predominate later. 

Love. 

March 25th. 
The soul lets no man go without some 
visitations and holy-days of a diviner 
presence. 

New England Reformers. 

All our days are so unprofitable while 
they pass, that 'tis wonderful where or 
when we ever got anything of this which 
we call wisdom, poetry, virtue. We 
never got it on any dated calendar day. 



110 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

Some heavenly days must have been 

intercalated somewhere, like those that 

Hermes won with dice of the Moon, that 

Osiris might be born. It is said, all 

martyrdoms looked mean when they 

were suffered. Every ship is a romantic 

object, except that we sail in. 

Experience, 

March 26th. 
Let a man fall into the divine circuits, 
and he is enlarged. Obedience to his 
genius is the only liberating influence. 
We wish to escape from subjection, and 
a sense of inferiority — and we make self- 
denying ordinances, we drink water, we 
eat grass, we refuse the laws, we go to 
jail : it is all in vain ; only by obedience 
to his genius; only by the freest activity 
in the way constitutional to him, does an 
angel seem to arise before a man, and 



FROM EMERSON. Ill 



lead him by the hand out of all the wards 
of the prison. 

New England Reformers. 

Wild liberty develops iron conscience. 
Want of liberty, by strengthening law 
and decorum, stupefies conscience. 

Politics. 

March 2jth. 

A healthy soul stands united with the 
Just and the True, as the magnet arranges 
itself with the pole, so that he stands to 
all beholders like a transparent object 
betwixt them and the sun, and whoso 
journeys towards the sun, journeys 
towards that person. He is thus the 
medium of the highest influence to all 
who are not on the same level. Thus 
men of character are the conscience of 
the society to which they belong. 

The natural measure of this power is 



112 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

the resistance of circumstances. Impure 

men consider life as it is reflected in 

opinions, events, and persons. They 

cannot see the action, until it is done. 

Yet its moral element preexisted in the 

actor, and its quality as right or wrong, 

it was easy to predict. 

Character, 

March 28th. 
Everything in nature is bipolar, or has 
a positive and negative pole. There is a 
male and a female, a spirit and a fact, a 
north and a south. Spirit is the positive, 
the event is the negative. Will is the 
north, action the south pole. Character 
may be ranked as having its natural place 
in the north. It shares the magnetic cur- 
rents of the system. The feeble souls 
are drawn to the south or negative pole. 
They look at the profit or hurt of the 



FROM EMERSON. 113 

action. They never behold a principle 
until it is lodged in a person. They do 
not wish to be lovely, but to be loved. 
The class of character like to hear of 
their faults : the other class do not like to 
hear of faults; they worship events; 
secure to them a fact, a connection, a 
certain chain of circumstances, and they 
will ask no more. The hero sees that the 
event is ancillary : it must follow him. 

Character. 

March 29th. 

Little thinks, in the field, yon red-cloaked 

clown, 

Of thee, from the hilltop looking down ; 

And the heifer, that lows in the upland 
farm, 

Far-heard, lows not thine ear to charm ; 

The sexton tolling the bell at noon, 

Dreams not that great Napoleon 



114 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

Stops his horse, and lists with delight, 
Whilst his files sweep round yon Alpine 

height; 
Nor knowest thou what argument 
Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has 

lent: 
All are needed by each one, 
Nothing is fair or good alone. 

Each and All. 

The power of man consists in the 
multitude of his affinities, in the fact 
that his life is intertwined with the whole 
chain of organic and inorganic being. 
In the age of the Caesars out from the 
Forum at Rome proceeded the great 
highways north, south, east, west, to 
the centre of every province of the 
empire, making each market-town of 
Persia, Spain, and Britain pervious to the 
soldiers of the capital: so out of the 



FROM EMERSON. 115 

human heart go as it were highways to 
the heart of every object in nature, to 
reduce it under the dominion of man. A 
man is a bundle of relations, a knot of 
roots, whose flower and fruitage is the 
world. 

History. 

March joth. 
Whilst we converse with what is above 
us, we do not grow old, but grow young. 
Infancy, youth, receptive, aspiring, with 
religious eye looking upward, counts it- 
self nothing and abandons itself to the 
instruction flowing from all sides. But 
the man and woman of seventy assume 
to know all; throw up their hope; re- 
nounce aspiration; accept the actual for 
the necessary and talk down to the 
young. Let them then become organs 
of the Holy Ghost; let them be lovers; 



116 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

let them behold truth; and their eyes are 
uplifted, their wrinkles smoothed, they 
are perfumed again with hope and power. 
This old age ought not to creep on a hu- 
man mind. In nature every moment is 
new; the past is always swallowed and 
forgotten; the coming only is sacred. 
Nothing is secure but life, transition, the 
energizing spirit. No love can be bound 
by oath or covenant to secure it against 
a higher love. No truth so sublime but 
it may be trivial to-morrow in the light 
of new thoughts. People wish to be 
settled : only as far as they are unsettled 
is there any hope for them. 

Circles. 

March j i st. 
We must trust infinitely to the benefi- 
cent necessity which shines through all 
laws. Human nature expresses itself in 



FROM EMERSON. 117 

them as characteristically as in statues, 
or songs, or railroads, and an abstract of 
the codes of nations would be a tran- 
script of the common conscience. Gov- 
ernments have their origin in the moral 
identity of men. Reason for one is seen 
to be reason for another, and for every 
other. There is a middle measure which 
satisfies all parties, be they never so many, 
or so resolute for their own. Every man 
finds a sanction for his simplest claims 
and deeds in decisions of his own mind, 
which he calls Truth and Holiness. 

Politics. 



APRIL. 



April ist. 

If I knew 

Only the herbs and simples of the wood, 

Rue, cinquefoil, gill, vervain, and pim- 
pernel, 

Blue-vetch, and trillium, hawkweed, sas- 
safras, 

Milkweeds, and murky brakes, quaint 
pipes and sundew, 

And rare and virtuous roots, which in 
these woods 

Draw untold juices from the common 
earth, 

Untold, unknown, and I could surely 
spell 

Their fragrance, and their chemistry 
apply 

121 



122 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

By sweet affinities to human flesh, 
Driving the foe and stablishing the 

friend, — 
O that were much, and I could be a part 
Of the round day, related to the sun, 
And planted world, and full executor 
Of their imperfect functions. 

Blight. 

April 2d. 
For nature beats in perfect tune, 
And rounds with rhyme her every rune, 
Whether she work in land or sea, 
Or hide underground her alchemy. 
Thou canst not wave thy staff in air, 
Or dip thy paddle in the lake, 
But it carves the bow of beauty there, 
And the ripples in rhymes the oar for- 
sake. 
The wood is wiser far than thou : 
The wood and wave each other know. 



FROM EMERSON. 123 

Not unrelated, unaffied, 

But to each thought and thing allied, 

Is perfect nature's every part, 

Rooted in the mighty heart. 

Wood Notes. 

April }d. 

The gentleman is a man of truth, lord 
of his own actions, and expressing that 
lordship in his behavior, not in any man- 
ner dependent and servile either on per- 
sons, or opinions, or possessions. Be- 
yond this fact of truth and real force, the 
word denotes good-nature or benevo- 
lence; manhood first, and then gentle- 
ness. Manners. 

It is made of the spirit, more than of 
the talent of men, and is a compound 
result, into which every great force en- 
ters as an ingredient, namely, virtue, wit, 
beauty, wealth, and power. iud. 



124 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

April 4th. 
A gentleman makes no noise: a lady 
is serene. 

Manners. 

All that fashion demands is composure, 

and self-content. 

Ibid. 

The love of beauty is mainly the love 
of measure or- proportion. The person 
who screams, or uses the superlative de- 
gree, or converses with heat, puts whole 

drawing-rooms to flight. 

Ibid. 

A sainted soul is always elegant, and, 
if it will, passes unchallenged into the 
most guarded ring. 

Ibid. 

April 5th. 
"Things more excellent than every 
image," says Jamblichus, "are expressed 
through images." Things admit of being 



FROM EMERSON. 125 

used as symbols, because nature is a 
symbol, in the whole, and in every part. 
Every line we can draw in the sand, has 
expression; and there is no body with- 
out its spirit of genius. All form is an 
effect of character; all condition, of the 
quality of the life; all harmony, of 
health ; (and for this reason, a perception 
of beauty should be sympathetic, or 
proper only to the good). The beautiful 
rests on the foundations of the necessary. 
The soul makes the body, as the wise 
Spenser teaches: — 

So every spirit, as it is most pure, 
And hath in it the more of heavenly light, 
So it the fairer body doth procure 
To habit in, and it more fairly dight, 
With cheerful grace and amiable sight. 
For, of the soul, the body form doth take, 
For soul is form, and doth the body make. 

The Poet. 



126 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

April 6th. 
The nonchalance of boys who are sure 
of a dinner, and would disdain as much 
as a lord to do or say aught to conciliate 
one, is the healthy attitude of human na- 
ture. How is a boy the master of soci- 
ety; independent, irresponsible, looking 
out from his corner on such people and 
facts as pass by, he tries and sentences 
them on their merits, in the swift, sum- 
mary way of boys, as good, bad, inter- 
esting, silly, eloquent, troublesome. He 
cumbers himself never about conse- 
quences, about interests; he gives an in- 
dependent, genuine verdict. You must 
court him, he does not court you. But 
the man is as it were clapped into jail by 
his consciousness. 

Self-Reliance, 



FROM EMERSON. 127 



And simple maids and noble youth 
Are welcome to the man of truth. 
Most welcome they who need him most, 
They feed the spring which they exhaust. 

Saadi. 

April yth. 
How easily, if fate would suffer it, we 
might keep forever these beautiful limits, 
and adjust ourselves, once for all, to the 
perfect calculation of the kingdom of 
known cause and effect. In the street 
and in the newspapers, life appears so 
plain a business, that manly resolution 
and adherence to the multiplication-table 
through all weathers, will insure success. 
But ah! presently comes a day, or it is 
only a half-hour, with its angel-whisper- 
ing, —which discomfits the conclusions 
of nations and of years! To-morrow 



128 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

again, everything looks real and angular, 
the habitual standards are reinstated, 
common sense is as rare as genius, — is 
the basis of genius, and experience is 
hands and feet to every enterprise; — and 
yet, he who should do his business on 
this understanding, would be quickly 
bankrupt. 

Experience. 

April 8th. 
How dear, how soothing to man, arises 
the idea of God, peopling the lonely 
place, effacing the scars of our mistakes 
and disappointments! When we have 
broken our god of tradition and ceased 
from our god of rhetoric, then may God 
fire the heart with his presence. It is the 
doubling of the heart itself, nay, the in- 
finite enlargement of the heart with a 
power of growth to a new infinity on 



FE03I EMERSON. 129 

every side. It inspires in man an infalli- 
ble trust. He has not the conviction, but 
the sight, that the best is the true, and 
may in that thought easily dismiss all 
particular uncertainties and fears, and 
adjourn to the sure revelation of time the 
solution of his private riddles. He is 
sure that his welfare is dear to the heart 
of being. 

The Over-Soul. 

April gth. 
There is no virtue which is final; all 
are initial. The virtues of society are 
vices of the saint. 

Circles. 

Society gains nothing while a man, not 
himself renovated, attempts to renovate 
things around him ; he has become tedi- 
ously good in some particular, but negli- 
gent or narrow in the rest; and hypocrisy 



130 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

and vanity are often the disgusting 
result. 

It is handsomer to remain in the estab- 
lishment better than the establishment, 
and conduct that in the best manner, 
than to make a sally against evil by some 
single improvement, without supporting 
it by a total regeneration. 

New England Reformers. 

They wish to be saved from the mis- 
chiefs of their vices, but not from their 
vices. 

Experience. 

April 10th. 

"Whether is better the gift or the donor ? 

Come to me," 

Quoth the pine tree, 

"I am the giver of honor. 

He is great who can live by me; 



FROM EMERSON. 131 

The rough and bearded forester 

Is better than the lord ; 

God fills the scrip and canister, 

Sin piles the loaded board. 

The lord is the peasant that was, 

The peasant the lord that shall be, 

The lord is hay, the peasant grass, 

One dry and one the living tree. 

Genius with my boughs shall flourish, 

Want and cold our roots shall nourish ; 

Who liveth by the ragged pine, 

Foundeth a heroic line; 

Who liveth in the palace hall, 

Waneth fast and spendeth all. 

Wood Notes. 

But never can any advantage be taken 
of nature by a trick. The spirit of the 
world, the great calm presence of the 
creator, comes not forth to the sorceries 
of opium or of wine. The sublime 



132 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

vision comes to the pure and simple soul 
in a clean and chaste body. 

The Poet. 

April nth. 
The same guards which protect us 
from disaster, defect and enmity, defend 
us, if we will, from selfishness and 
fraud. Bolts and bars are not the best 
of our institutions, nor is shrewdness in 
trade a mark of wisdom. Men suffer all 
their life long under the foolish supersti- 
tion that they can be cheated. But it is 
as impossible for a man to be cheated by 
any one but himself, as for a thing to be 
and not to be at the same time. There 
is a third silent party to all our bargains. 
The nature and soul of things takes on 
itself the guaranty of the fulfilment of 
every contract, so that honest service 
cannot come to loss. If you serve an 



FROM EMERSON. 133 

ungrateful master, serve him the more. 
Put God in your debt. Every stroke 
shall be repaid. The longer the pay- 
ment is withholden, the better for you; 
for compound interest on compound in- 
terest is the rate and usage of this ex- 
chequer. Compensation. 

April 1 2th. 

Let the great world bustle on 

With war and trade, with camp and 

town. 
A thousand men shall dig and eat, 
At forge and furnace thousands sweat, 
And thousands sail the purple sea, 
And give or take the stroke of war, 
Or crowd the market and bazaar. 
Oft shall war end, and peace return, 
And cities rise where cities burn, 



134 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

Ere one man my hill shall climb, 
Who can turn the golden rhyme. 

Saadi. 

The poet is the sayer, the namer, and 
represents beauty. He is a sovereign, 
and stands on the centre. 

The Poet. 

April ijth. 

The growth of the intellect is sponta- 
neous in every step. The mind that grows 
could not predict the times, the means, 
the mode of that spontaneity. God enters 
by a private door into every individual. 
Long prior to the age of reflection is the 
thinking of the mind. Out of darkness 
it came insensibly into the marvelous 
light of to-day. In the period of infancy 
it accepted and disposed of all impres- 
sions from the surrounding creation after 



FROM EMERSON. 135 

its own way. Whatever any mind doth 
or saith is after a law. It has no random 
act or word. And this native law re- 
mains over it after it has come to reflec- 
tion or conscious thought. Over it al- 
ways reigned a firm law. In the most 
worn, pedantic, introverted self-tormen- 
tor's life, the greatest part is incalculable 
by him, unforeseen, unimaginable, and 
must be, until he can take himself up by 
his own ears. What am I ? What has 
my will done to make me that I am ? 
Nothing. I have been floated into this 
thought, this hour, this connection of 
events, by might and mind sublime, and 
my ingenuity and wilfulness have not 
thwarted, have not aided to an apprecia- 
ble degree. 

Intellect. 



136 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

April 14th. 

Nature keeps herself whole and her 
representation complete in the experi- 
ence of each mind. She suffers no seat 
to be vacant in her college. It is the 
secret of the world that all things sub- 
sist, and do not die, but only retire a 
little from sight, and afterwards return 
again. Whatever does not concern us, 
is concealed from us. 

Nominalist and Realist. 



I will give my son to eat 
Best of Pan's immortal meat, 
Bread to eat and juice to drink, 
So the thoughts that he shall think 
Shall not be forms of stars, but stars, 
Nor pictures pale, but Jove and Mars. 

Monadnoc. 



FROM EMERSON. 137 

April 15th. 
For me in showers, in sweeping show- 
ers, the spring 
Visits the valley : — break away the clouds, 
I bathe in the morn's soft and silvered 

air, 
And loiter willing by yon loitering 

stream. 
Sparrows far off, and, nearer, yonder bird 
Blue-coated, flying before, from tree to 

tree, 
Courageous sing a delicate overture, 
To lead the tardy concert of the year. 
Onward, and nearer draws the sun of 

May, 
And wide around the marriage of the 

plants 
Is sweetly solemnized; then flows amain 
The surge of summer's beauty; dell and 

crag, 



138 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

Hollow and lake, hillside, and pine ar- 
cade, 

Are touched with genius. Yonder ragged 
cliff 

Has thousand faces in a thousand hours. 

Musketaquid. 

April 1 6th. 
The world globes itself in a drop of 
dew. The microscope cannot find the 
animalcule which is less perfect for be- 
ing little. Eyes, ears, taste, smell, mo- 
tion, resistance, appetite, and organs of 
reproduction that take hold on eternity, 
— all find room to consist in the small 
creature. So do we put our life into 

every act. 

Compensation. 

The key to every man is his thought. 

Circles. 

That which we do not believe we can- 



FROM EMERSON, 139 

not adequately say, though we may re- 
peat the words never so often. 

Spiritual Laws. 

April iyth. 
To myself I oft recount 
Tales of many a famous mount. — 
Wales, Scotland, Uri, Hungary's dells, 
Roys, and Scanderbegs, and Tells. 
Here now shall nature crowd her powers, 
Her music, and her meteors, 
And, lifting man to the blue deep 
Where stars their perfect courses keep, 
Like wise preceptor lure his eye 
To sound the science of the sky, 
And carry learning to its height 
Of untried power and sane delight; 
The Indian cheer, the frosty skies 
Breed purer wits, inventive eyes, 
Eyes that frame cities where none be, 
And hands that 'stablish what these see: 



140 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

And, by the moral of his place, 
Hint summits of heroic grace; 
Man in these crags a fastness find 
To fight pollution of the mind; 
In the wide thaw and ooze of wrong, 
Adhere like this foundation strong, 
The insanity of towns to stem 
With simpleness for stratagem. 

Monadnoc. 

April iSth. 
What these strong masters wrote at large 

in miles, 
I followed in small copy in my acre: 
For there's no rood has not a star above 

it; 

The cordial quality of pear or plum 
Ascends as gladly in a single tree, 
As in broad orchards resonant with bees; 
And every atom poises for itself, 



FROM EMERSON. 141 

And for the whole. The gentle Mother 

of all 
Showed me the lore of colors and of 

sounds; 
The innumerable tenements of beauty; 
The miracle of generative force; 
Far-reaching concords of astronomy 
Felt in the plants and in the punctual 

birds; 
Mainly, the linked purpose of the whole; 
And, chiefest prize, found I true liberty, 
The home of homes plain-dealing Nature 

gave. 

Musketaquid. 

April igth. 

Money, which represents the prose of 
life, and which is hardly spoken of in 
parlors without an apology, is, in its 
effects and laws, as beautiful as roses. 



142 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

Property keeps the accounts of the 
world, and is always moral. The prop- 
erty will be found where the labor, the 
wisdom, and the virtue have been in 
nations, in classes, and (the whole life- 
time considered, with the compensa- 
tions) in the individual also. 

Nominalist and Realist. 

Under any forms, persons and prop- 
erty must and will have their just sway. 
They exert their power as steadily as 
matter its attraction. Cover up a pound 
of earth never so cunningly, divide 
and subdivide it; melt it to liquid, 
convert it to gas; it will always weigh a 
pound: it will always attract and resist 
other matter, by the full virtue of one 
pound weight; — and the attributes of a 
person, his wit and his moral energy, 
will exercise, under any law or extin- 



FROM EMERSON. 143 

guishing tyranny, their proper force, — 

if not overtly, then covertly, if not for 

the law, then against it; with right, or 

by might. 

Politics. 

April 20th. 
There are all degrees of proficiency in 
knowledge of the world. It is sufficient 
to our present purpose to indicate three. 
One class lives to the utility of the sym- 
bol, esteeming health and wealth a final 
good. Another class live above this 
mark to the beauty of the symbol, as 
the poet and artist and the naturalist 
and man of science. A third class live 
above the beauty of the symbol to the 
beauty of the thing signified ; these are 
wise men. The first class have common 
sense; the second, taste; and the third, 
spiritual perception. Once in a long 



144 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

time, a man traverses the whole scale, 
and sees and enjoys the symbol solidly, 
then also has a clear eye for its beauty, 
and lastly, whilst he pitches his tent on 
this sacred volcanic isle of nature, does 
not offer to build houses and barns 
thereon, reverencing the splendor of the 
God which he sees bursting through 
each chink and cranny. 

Prudence. 

April 21 St. 
It is all idle talking: as much as a man 
is a whole, so is he also a part; and it 
were partial not to see it. What you 
say in your pompous distribution only 
distributes you into your class and sec- 
tion. You have not got rid of parts by 
denying them, but are the more partial. 
You are one thing, but nature is one 
thing and the other thing, in the same 



FROM EMERSON. 145 



moment. She will not remain orbed in 
a thought, but rushes into persons: and 
when each person, inflamed to a fury of 
personality, would conquer all things to 
his poor crotchet, she raises up against 
him another person, and by many per- 
sons incarnates again a sort of whole. 

She will have all. 

Nominalist and Realist. 

April 22d. 
I find nothing healthful or exalting in 
the smooth conventions of society; I do 
not like the close air of saloons. I begin 
to suspect myself to be a prisoner, 
though treated with all this courtesy and 
luxury. I pay a destructive tax in my 
conformity. 

New England Reformers. 

. . . The custody of that body in 
which he is pent up, and of that jail-yard 



146 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

of individual relations in which he is en- 
closed. 

The Poet. 

We do not think we can speak to di- 
vine sentiments in man, and we do not 
try. We renounce all high aims. We 
believe that the defects of so many per- 
verse and so many frivolous people, who 
make up society, are organic, and society 
is a hospital of incurables. 

New England Reformers. 

April 2}d. 
I do not wish to expiate, but to live. 
My life is not an apology, but a life. It 
is for itself and not for a spectacle. I 
much prefer that it should be of a lower 
strain, so it be genuine and equal, than 
that it should be glittering and unsteady. 
I wish it to be sound and sweet, and not 
to need diet and bleeding. My life 



FROM EMERSON. 147 

should be unique; it should be an alms, 
a battle, a conquest, a medicine. . . . 

What I must do is all that concerns 
me, not what the people think. This 
rule, equally arduous in actual and in 
intellectual life, may serve for the whole 
distinction between greatness and mean- 
ness. It is the harder because you will 
always find those who think they know 
what is your duty better than you know 
it. It is easy in the world to live after 
the world's opinion; it is easy in soli- 
tude to live after our own ; but the great 
man is he who in the midst of the crowd 
keeps with perfect sweetness the inde- 
pendence of solitude. 

Self-Reliance. 

April 24th. 
The objection to conforming to usages 
that have become dead to you is that it 



148 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

scatters your force. It loses your time 
and blurs the impression of your char- 
acter. If you maintain a dead church, 
contribute to a dead Bible Society, vote 
with a great party either for the Govern- 
ment or against it, spread your table like 
base housekeepers, — under all these 
screens I have difficulty to detect the 
precise man you are. And of course so 
much force is withdrawn from your 
proper life. But do your thing, and I 
shall know you. Do your work, and 
you shall reinforce yourself. 

Self -Reliance. 

He who would gather immortal palms 
must not be hindered by the name of 
goodness, but must explore if it be good- 
ness. Nothing is at last sacred but the 
integrity of our own mind. Absolve 



FROM EMERSON. 149 

you to yourself, and you shall have the 

suffrage of the world. 

Ibid. 

April 25th. 
The Supreme Critic on all the errors of 
the past and the present, and the only 
prophet of that which must be, is that 
great nature in which we rest as the 
earth lies in the soft arms of the atmos- 
phere; that Unity, that Over-soul, within 
which every man's particular being is 
contained and made one with all other; 
that common heart of which all sincere 
conversation is the worship, to which all 
right action is submission; that over- 
powering reality which confutes our 
tricks and talents, and constrains every 
one to pass for what he is, and to speak 
from his character and not from his 
tongue, and which evermore tends to 



150 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

pass into our thought and hand and be- 
come wisdom and virtue and power and 
beauty. We live in succession, in divi- 
sion, in parts, in particles. Meantime 
within man is the soul of the whole; the 
wise silence; the universal beauty, to 
which every part and particle is equally 
related; the eternal One. 

The Over-Soul, 

April 26th. 
To be alone wilt thou begin, 
When worlds of lovers hem thee in ? 
To-morrow, when the masks shall fall 
That dizen nature's carnival, 
The pure shall see, by their own will, 
Which overflowing love shall fill, — 
'Tis not within the force of Fate 
The fate-conjoined to separate. 

Threnody. 



FROM EMERSON. 151 

Balance-loving nature 

Made all things in pairs. 

To every foot its antipode, 

Each color with its counter glowed, 

To every tone beat answering tones, 

Higher or graver; 

Flavor gladly blends with flavor; 

Leaf answers leaf upon the bough. 

Merlin. 

April 2jth. 
Ralph Waldo Emerson died April 27, 1882. 

Covetous death bereaved us all, 
To aggrandize one funeral. 

Threnody. 

Inspirer, prophet evermore, 
Pillar which God aloft had set 
So that men might it not forget. 

Monadnoc. 

And know, my higher gifts unbind 
The zone that girds the incarnate mind, 



152 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

When the scanty shores are full 

With Thought's perilous whirling pool, 

When frail Nature can no more, — 

Then the spirit strikes the hour, 

My servant Death with solving rite 

Pours finite into infinite. 

Threnody. 

He builded better than he knew. 

The Problem. 

April 28th. 
There is no luck in literary reputation. 
They who make up the final verdict 
upon every book are not the partial and 
noisy readers of the hour when it ap- 
pears, but a court as of angels, a public 
not to be bribed, not to be entreated and 
not to be overawed, decides upon every 
man's title to fame. Only those books 
come down which deserve to last. All 
the gilt edges, vellum and morocco, all 



FROM EMERSON. 153 

the presentation-copies to all the libraries 
will not preserve a book in circulation 
beyond its intrinsic date. It must go 
with all Walpole's Noble and Royal Au- 
thors to its fate. Blackmore, Kotzebue, 
or Pollok may endure for a night, but 
Moses and Homer stand forever. There 
are not in the world at any one time 
more than a dozen persons who read 
and understand Plato : — never enough to 
pay for an edition of his works ; yet to 
every generation these come duly down, 
for the sake of those few persons, as if 
God brought them in his hand. "No 
book," said Bentley, "was ever written 
down by any but itself." The perma- 
nence of all books is fixed by no effort, 
friendly or hostile, but by their own 
specific gravity, or the intrinsic impor- 
tance of their contents to the constant 



154 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

mind of man. " Do not trouble yourself 
too much about the light on your statue," 
said Michael Angelo to the young sculp- 
tor: "the light of the public square will 
test its value." 

Spiritual Laws. 

April 2ptk. 

Hymn sung at the completion of Concord Monu- 
ment, April 19th, 1836. 

By the rude bridge that arched the flood, 
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, 

Here once the embattled farmers stood, 
And fired the shot heard round the 
world. 

The foe long since in silence slept, 
Alike the Conqueror silent sleeps, 

And Time the ruined bridge has swept 
Down the dark stream which seaward 
creeps. 



FROM EMERSON. 155 

On this green bank, by this soft stream, 
We set to-day a votive stone, 

That memory may their deed redeem, 
When like our sires our sons are gone. 

Spirit! who made those freemen dare 
To die, or leave their children free, 

Bid time and nature gently spare 
The shaft we raise to them and Thee. 



April joth. 

The south wind brings 

Life, sunshine, and desire, 

And on every mount and meadow 

Breathes aromatic fire, 

But over the dead he has no power, 

The lost, the lost he cannot restore, 

And, looking over the hills, I mourn 

the darling who shall not return. 



156 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

I see my empty house, 

I see my trees repair their boughs, 

And he, — the wondrous child, 

Whose silver warble wild 

Outvalued every pulsing sound 

Within the air's cerulean round, 

The hyacinthine boy, for whom 

Morn well might break, and April bloom, 

The gracious boy, who did adorn 

The world whereinto he was born, 

And by his countenance repay 

The favor of the loving Day, 

Has disappeared from the Day's eye. 

Threnody. 



MAY. 



May i st. 

In May, when sea-winds pierced our 

solitudes, 
I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods, 
Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp 

nook, 
To please the desert and the sluggish 

brook. 
The purple petals fallen in the pool 
Made the black water with their beauty 

gay; 

Here might the redbird come his plumes 

to cool, 
And court the flower that cheapens his 

array. 
Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why 
This charm is wasted on the earth and 

sky, 

159 



160 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

Tell them, dear, that, if eyes were made 

for seeing, 
Then beauty is its own excuse for being ; 
Why thou wert there, O rival of the 

rose ! 

I never thought to ask; I never knew; 

But in my simple ignorance suppose 

The self-same power that brought me 

there, brought you. 

The Rhodora, 

On being asked, Whence is the flower^? 

May 2d. 
I am a willow of the wilderness, 
Loving the wind that bent me. All my 

hurts 
My garden-spade can heal. A woodland 

walk, 
A wild rose, or rock-loving columbine, 
Salve my worst wounds, and leave no 

cicatrice. 



FROM EMERSON. 161 



For thus the wood-gods murmured in 
my ear, 

Dost love our manners ? Canst thou si- 
lent lie ? 

Canst thou, thy pride forgot, like nature 
pass 

Into the winter night's extinguished 
mood? 

Canst thou shine now, then darkle, 

And being latent, feel thyself no less ? 

As when the all-worshiped moon at- 
tracts the eye, 

The river, hill, stems, foliage, are obscure, 

Yet envies none, none are unenviable. 

Mushetaquid. 

May 3d. 

The difference between talents and 

character is adroitness to keep the old and 

trodden round, and power and courage 

to make a new road to new and better 



162 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

goals. Character makes an overpower- 
ing present, a cheerful, determined hour, 
which fortifies all the company by mak- 
ing them see that much is possible and 
excellent that was not thought of. Char- 
acter dulls the impression of particular 
events. When we see the conquerer we 
do not think much of any one battle or 
success. We see that we had exagger- 
ated the difficulty. It was easy to him. 
The great man is not convulsible or tor- 
mentable. He is so much that events 
pass over him without much impression. 
People say sometimes, " See what I have 
overcome; see how cheerful I am; see 
how completely I have triumphed over 
these black events." Not if they still re- 
mind me of the black event, — they have 
not yet conquered. 

Circles. 



FROM EMERSON. 163 

May 4th. 
The green grass is growing, 

The morning wind is in it, 
'Tis a tune worth the knowing, 

Though it change every minute. 

'Tis a tune of the spring, 

Every year plays it over, 
To the robin on the wing, 

To the pausing lover. 

O'er ten thousand thousand acres 
Goes light the nimble zephyr, 

The flowers, tiny feet of shakers, 
Worship him ever. 

To Ellen, at the South. 

May 5th. 
We sell the thrones of angels for a 
short and turbulent pleasure. 

Circles. 



164 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

Chilled with a miserly comparison 
Of the toy's purchase with the length of 
life. Blight. 

We have aimed at a swift and petty 
benefit, to suck a sudden sweetness. 
We snatch at the slowest fruit in the 
whole garden of God, which many sum- 
mers and many winters must ripen . . . 
to suck a short and all-confounding 
pleasure, instead of the pure nectar of God. 

Friendship. 

May 6th. 
Bashfulness and apathy are a tough 
husk in which a delicate organization is 
protected from premature ripening. It 
would be lost if it knew itself before any 
of the best souls were yet ripe enough to 
know and own it. Respect the natur- 
langsamheit which hardens the ruby in a 
million years, and works in duration in 



FROM EMERSON. 165 



which Alps and Andes come and go as 
rainbows. The good spirit of our life 
has no heaven which is the price of rash- 
ness. Love, which is the essence of 
God, is not for ievity, but for the total 
worth of man. Let us not have this 
childish luxury in our regards; but the 
austerest worth; let us approach our 
friend with an audacious trust in the 
truth of his heart, in the breadth, impos- 
sible to be overturned, of his foundations. 

Friendship. 

May yth. 
Who loves nature ? Who does not ? 

The Poet. 
I have come from the spring-woods, 
From the fragrant solitudes; 
Listen what the poplar tree, 
And murmuring waters counselled me. 

To Rhea. 



166 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

Swims the world in ecstasy, 

The forest waves, the morning breaks, 

The pastures sleep, ripple the lakes, 

Leaves twinkle, flowers like persons be, 

And life pulsates in rock or tree. 

Saadi. 

May 8th. 

But thou, poor child! unbound, un- 
rhymed, 

Whence earnest thou, misplaced, mis- 
timed ? 

Whence, O thou orphan and defrauded ? 

Is thy land peeled, thy realm marauded ? 

Who thee divorced, deceived, and left; 

Thee of thy faith who hath bereft, 

And torn the ensigns from thy brow, 

And sunk the immortal eye so low ? 

Thy cheek too white, thy form too 
slender, 

Thy gait too slow, thy habits tender, 



FROM EMERSON. 167 

For royal man ; they thee confess 

An exile from the wilderness, — 

The hills where health with health agrees, 

And the wise soul expels disease. 

Hark! in thy ear I will tell the sign 

By which thy hurt thou mayst divine. 

When thou shalt climb the mountain cliff, 

Or see the wide shore from thy skiff, 

To thee the horizon shall express 

Only emptiness and emptiness; 

There is no man of nature's worth 

In the circle of the earth, 

And to thine eye the vast skies fall 

Dire and satirical 

On clucking hens, and prating fools, 

On thieves, on drudges, and on dolls. 



Alas! thine is the bankruptcy, 
Blessed nature so to see. 

Wood Notes. 



168 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

May pth. 
The circle of the green earth he must 
measure with his shoes to find the man 
who can yield him truth. He shall then 
know that there is somewhat more blessed 
and great in hearing than in speaking. 
Happy is the hearing man: unhappy the 
speaking man. As long as I hear truth I 
am bathed by a beautiful element and am 
not conscious of any limits to my nature. 
The suggestions are thousandfold that I 
hear and see. The waters of the great 
deep have ingress and egress to the soul. 
But if I speak, I define, I confine and am 

less. Intellect. 

The ancient sentence said, Let us be 
silent, for so are the gods. Silence is a 
solvent that destroys personality, and 
gives us leave to be great and universal. 

Ibid. 



FROM EMERSON. 169 



May ioth. 

Gold and iron are good 
To buy iron and gold ; 
All earth's fleece and food 
For their like are sold. 
Boded Merlin wise, 
Proved Napoleon great, — 
Nor kind nor coinage buys 
Aught above its rate. 
Fear, Craft, and Avarice 
Cannot rear a State. 
Out of dust to build 
What is more than dust, — 



But the wise know that foolish legisla- 
tion is a rope of sand, which perishes in 
the twisting; that the State must follow, 
and not lead the character and progress 
of the citizen; the strongest usurper is 
quickly got rid of; and they only who 
built on Ideas, build for eternity. 

Politics. 



170 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

May nth. 

Then I said, "I covet Truth; 
Beauty is unripe childhood's cheat, — 
I leave it behind with the games of 

youth." 
As I spoke, beneath my feet 
The ground-pine curled its pretty 

wreath, 
Running over the club-moss burrs; 
I inhaled the violet's breath; 
Around me stood the oaks and firs; 
Pine cones and acorns lay on the 

ground; 
Above me soared the eternal sky, 
Full of light and deity ; 
Again I saw, again I heard, 
The rolling river, the morning bird; — 
Beauty through my senses stole, 
I yielded myself to the perfect whole. 

Each and All. 



FROM EMERSON. 171 

May 1 2th. 
"What hath he done?" is the divine 
question which searches men and trans- 
pierces every false reputation. A fop 
may sit in any chair of the world nor be 
distinguished for his hour from Homer 
and Washington; but there can never be 
any doubt concerning the respective abil- 
ity of human beings when we seek the 
truth. Pretension may sit still, but can- 
not act. Pretension never feigned an act 
of real greatness. 

Spiritual Laws. 



Life alone can impart life; and though 
we should burst we can only be valued 
as we make ourselves valuable. 

Ibid. 



172 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

May 13th. 

The sun set ; but set not his hope : 
Stars rose ; his faith was earlier up ; 
Fixed on the enormous galaxy, 
Deeper and older seemed his eye : 
And matched his sufferance sublime 
The taciturnity of time. 
He spoke, and words more soft than rain 
Brought the Age of Gold again : 
His action won such reverence sweet, 
As hid all measure of the feat. 



Work of his hand 

He nor commends nor grieves : 

Pleads for itself the fact ; 

As unrepenting Nature leaves 

Her every act. 



I have read that those who listened to 
Lord Chatham felt that there was some- 
thing finer in the man than anything 
which he said. 

Character. 



FROM EMERSON. 173 

May 14th. 
The rain has spoiled the farmer's day; 
Shall sorrow put my books away ? 
Thereby are two days lost: 
Nature shall mind her own affairs, 
I will attend my proper cares, 
In rain, or sun, or frost. 

" Suum Cuique." 

The intellectual life may be kept clean 
and healthful if man will live the life of 
nature and not import into his mind dif- 
ficulties which are none of his. 

Spiritual Laws. 

May 15th. 
Dream delivers us to dream, and there 
is no end to illusion. Life is a train of 
moods like a string of beads, and, as we 
pass through them, they prove to be 
many-colored lenses which paint the 



174 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

world their own hue, and each shows 

only what lies in its focus. 

Experience. 

O mortal! thy ears are stones; 

These echoes are laden with tones 

Which only the pure can hear, 

Thou canst not catch what they recite 

Of Fate, and Will, of Want, and Right, 

Of man to come, of human life, 

Of Death, and Fortune, Growth, and 

Strife. 

Wood Notes. 

May 1 6th. 
Nothing shall warp me from the be- 
lief that every man is a lover of truth. 
There is no pure lie, no pure malignity 
in nature. The entertainment of the 
proposition of depravity is the last profli- 
gacy and profanation. 

New England Reformers. 



FROM EMERSON. 175 

Yet spake yon purple mountain, 

Yet said yon ancient wood, 

That night or day, that love or crime 

Lead all souls to the good. 

The Park. 

May lyth. 
Open innumerable doors, 
The heaven where unveiled Allah pours 
The flood of truth, the flood of good, 
The seraph's and the cherub's food; 
Those doors are men; the pariah kind 
Admits thee to the perfect Mind. 
Seek not beyond thy cottage wall 
Redeemer that can yield thee all. 
While thou sittest at thy door, 
On the desert's yellow floor, 
Listening to the gray-haired crones, 
Foolish gossips, ancient drones, — 
Saadi, see, they rise in stature 
To the height of mighty nature, 



176 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

And the secret stands revealed 

Fraudulent Time in vain concealed, 

That blessed gods in servile masks 

Plied for thee thy household tasks. 

Saadi. 

May 18th. 
Let man serve law for man, 
Live for friendship, live for love, 
For truth's and harmony's behoof; 
The state may follow how it can, 
As Olympus follows Jove. 
Yet do not I implore 
The wrinkled shopman to my sounding 

woods, 
Nor bid the unwilling senator 
Ask votes of thrushes in the solitudes. 
Every one to his chosen work. 
Foolish hands may mix and mar, 
Wise and sure the issues are. 

Ode to Wm. H. Charming. 



FB03I EMERSON. Ill 

May ipth. 

Know'st thou what wove yon wood- 
bird's nest 
Of leaves and feathers from her breast; 
Or how the fish outbuilt its shell, 
Painting with morn each annual cell; 
Or how the sacred pine tree adds 
To her old leaves new myriads ? 

The Problem. 



The masterpieces of God, the total 
growths and universal moments of the 
soul, He bideth; they are incalculable. 

Circles. 

May 20th. 
Cause and effect are the two sides of 

one fact. 

Love. I 



178 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

May 21 st. 
The forms of politeness universally ex- 
press benevolence in superlative degrees. 
What if they are in the mouths of selfish 
men, and used as means of selfishness ? 
What if the false gentleman almost bows 
the true out of the world? . . . Real 
service will not lose its nobleness. All 
generosity is not merely French and 
sentimental; nor is it to be concealed, 
that living blood and a passion of kind- 
ness does at last distinguish God's gen- 
tleman from Fashion's. 

Manners. 

God knows that all sorts of gentlemen 
knock at the door. 

Ibid. 

May 22d. 
Life itself is a bubble and a skepticism, 
and a sleep within a sleep. Grant it, and 



FROM EMERSON. 179 

as much more as they will, — but thou, 
God's darling! heed thy private dream: 
thou wilt not be missed in the scorning 
and skepticism: there are enough of 
them : stay there in thy closet, and toil, 
until the rest are agreed what to do 
about it. Thy sickness, they say, and 
thy puny habit, require that thou do this 
or avoid that, but know that thy life is a 
flitting state, a tent for a night, and do 
thou, sick or well, finish that stint. 

Experience. 

May 23d. 
These manifold tenacious qualities, 
this chemistry and vegetation, these 
metals and animals, which seem to stand 
there for their own sake, are means and 
methods only, are words of God, and as 
fugitive as other words. . . . Good 
as is discourse, silence is better, and 



180 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

shames it. . . . The simplest words, 
— we do not know what they mean ex- 
cept when we love and aspire. 

Circles. 

May 24th. 
Illusion, Temperament, Succession, 
Surface, Surprise, Reality, Subjective^ 
ness, — these are threads on the loom of 
time, these are the lords of life. I dare 
not assume to give their order, but I 
name them as I find them in my way. I 
know better than to claim any complete- 
ness for my picture. I am a fragment, 
and this is a fragment of me. I can very 
confidently announce one or another 
law, which throws itself into relief and 
form, but I am too young yet by some 
ages to compile a code. I gossip for my 
hour concerning the eternal politics. 

Experience. 



FROM EMERSON. 181 



May 25th. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson born May 25 th, 1803. 

A prophet of the soul. 

The Problem. 

Rare, extravagant spirits come by us 
at intervals, who disclose to us new facts 
in nature. I see that men of God have 
always from time to time walked among 
men and made their commission felt in 
the heart and soul of the commonest 
hearer. 

History. 

Beware when the great God lets loose 
a thinker on this planet. Then all things 
are at risk. It is as when a conflagration 
has broken out in a great city, and no 
man knows what is safe, or where it 
will end. 

Circles. 



182 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

May 26th. 
Vet shine for ever virgin minds, 
Loved by stars and purest winds, 
Which, o'er passion throned sedate, 
Have not hazarded their state, 
Disconcert the searching spy, 
Rendering to a curious eye 
The durance of a granite ledge 
To those who gaze from the sea's edge. 
It is there for benefit, 
It is there for purging light, 
There for purifying storms, 
And its depths reflect all forms; 
It cannot parley with the mean, 
Pure by impure is not seen. 

Astrsea. 

May 2yth. 
The effect of any writing on the public 
mind is mathematically measurable by its 



FROM EMERSON. 183 

depth of thought. How much water 
does it draw ? If it awaken you to think ; 
if it lift you from your feet with the 
great voice of eloquence; then the effect 
is to be wide, slow, permanent, over the 
minds of men; if the pages instruct you 
not, they will die like flies in the hour. 
The way to speak and write what shall 
not go out of fashion is to speak and 
write sincerely. The argument which 
has not power to reach my own practice, 
I may well doubt will fail to reach yours. 
But take Sidney's maxim: "Look in 
thy heart, and write." He that writes to 
himself writes to an eternal public. 

Spiritual Laws. 

May 28th. 

I feel the eternity of man, the identity 
of his thought. The Greek had it seems 



184 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

the same fellow-beings as I. The sun 
and moon, water and fire, met his heart 
precisely as they meet mine. Then the 
vaunted distinction between Greek and 
English, between Classic and Romantic 
schools, seems superficial and pedantic. 
When a thought of Plato becomes a 
thought to me, — when a truth that fired 
the soul of Pindar fires mine, time is no 
more. 

History. 

May 29th. 
The passion re-makes the world for 
the youth. It makes all things alive and 
significant. Nature grows conscious. 
Every bird on the boughs of the tree 
sings now to his heart and soul. Almost 
the notes are articulate. The clouds have 
faces as he looks on them. The trees of 
the forest, the waving grass and the 



FROM EMERSON. 185 

peeping flowers have grown intelligent; 

and almost he fears to trust them with 

the secret which they seem to invite. 

Yet nature soothes and sympathizes. In 

the green solitude he finds a dearer home 

than with men. 

Love. 

When the pine tosses its cones 
To the song of its waterfall tones, 
He speeds to the woodland walks, 
To birds and trees he talks. 

Wood Notes. 

May joth. 

With the pulse of manly hearts, 
With the voice of orators, 
With the din of city arts, 
With the cannonade of wars. 
With the marches of the brave. 

Merlin. 



186 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

That which all things tend to educe, 
which freedom, cultivation, intercourse, 
revolutions, go to form and deliver, is 
character; that is the end of nature, to 
reach unto this coronation, of her king. 
To educate the wise man, the State ex- 
ists; and with the appearance of the 
wise man, the State expires. The ap- 
pearance of character makes the State 
unnecessary. The wise man is the State. 

Politics. 

May 3 i st. 
So, in regard to disagreeable and for- 
midable things, prudence does not con- 
sist in evasion or in flight, but in cour- 
age. He who wishes to walk in the 
most peaceful parts of life with any 
serenity must screw himself up to reso- 
lution. Let him front the object of his 



FROM EMERSON. 187 

worst apprehension, and his stoutness 
will commonly make his fears ground- 
less. The Latin proverb says, "in bat- 
tles the eye is first overcome." 

Prudence. 



<. 



JUNE. 



June ist 
Burly dozing humblebee! 
Where thou art is clime for me. 
***** 

Insect lover of the sun, 

Joy of thy dominion! 

Sailor of the atmosphere, 

Swimmer through the waves of air, 

Voyager of light and noon, 

Epicurean of June, 

Wait I prithee, till I come 

Within ear-shot of thy hum,— 

All without is martyrdom. 

When the south wind, in May days, 

With a net of shining haze, 

Silvers the horizon wall, 

And, with softness touching all, 

191 



192 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

Tints the human countenance 
With a color of romance, 
And, infusing subtle heats, 
Turns the sod to violets, 
Thou in sunny solitudes, 
Rover of the underwoods, 
The green silence dost displace, 
With thy mellow breezy bass. 

The Humblebee. 

June 2d. 

Twas one of the charmed days 

When the genius of God doth flow, 

The wind may alter twenty ways, 

A tempest cannot blow: 

It may blow north, it still is warm ; 

Or south, it still is clear; 

Or east, it smells like a clover farm ; 

Or west, no thunder fear. 

Wood Notes. 



FROM EMERSON. 193 

June 3d. 
Hast thou named all the birds without a 

gun; 
Loved the wood-rose, and left it on its 

stalk ; 
At rich men's tables eaten bread and 

pulse; 
Unarmed, faced danger with a heart of 

trust; 
And loved so well a high behavior 
In man or maid, that thou from speech 

refrained, 
Nobility more nobly to repay ? — 
O be my friend, and teach me to be 

thine! 

Forbearance. 

June 4th. 
Who hears me, who understands me, 
becomes mine,— a possession for all time. 

Friendship. 



194 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

A friend may well be reckoned the 
masterpiece of nature. ibid. 

June 5th. 
Prudence is the virtue of the senses. 
It is the science of appearances. It is the 
outmost action of the inward life. It is 
God taking thought for oxen. It moves 
matter after the laws of matter. It is 
content to seek health of body by com- 
plying with physical conditions, and 
health of mind by the laws of the 

intellect. Prudence. 

But it behooves each to see, when he 
sacrifices prudence, to what god he 
devotes it; if to ease and pleasure, he 
had better be prudent still ; if to a great 
trust, he can well spare his mule and 
panniers who has a winged chariot in- 
stead. Circles. 



FROM EMERSON. 195 

June 6th. 

The falling waters led me, 

The foodful waters fed me, 

And brought me to the lowest land, 

Unerring to the ocean sand. 

The moss upon the forest bark 

Was pole-star when the night was dark; 

The purple berries in the wood 

Supplied me necessary food. 

For nature ever faithful is 

To such as trust her faithfulness. 

When the forest shall mislead me, 

When the night and morning lie, 

When sea and land refuse to feed me, 

Twill be time enough to die; 

Then will yet my mother yield 

A pillow in her greenest field, 

Nor the June flowers scorn to cover 

The clay of their departed lover. 

Wood Notes, 



196 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

June yth. 

Men cease to interest us when we find 
their limitations. The only sin is limita- 
tion. As soon as you once come up with 
a man's limitations, it is all over with him. 
Has he talents ? has he enterprises ? has 
he knowledge ? It boots not. Infinitely 
alluring and attractive was he to you yes- 
terday, a great hope, a sea to swim in; 
now, you have found his shores, found 
it a pond, and you care not if you never 
see it again. 

Circles. 



Suffice it for the joy of the universe, 
that we have not arrived at a wall, but at 
interminable oceans. 

Experience. 



FROM EMERSON. 197 

June 8th. 
The hunger for wealth, which reduces 
the planet to a garden, fools the eager 
pursuer. What is the end sought? 
Plainly to secure the ends of good sense 
and beauty, from the intrusion of deform- 
ity or vulgarity of any kind. But what 
an operose method! What a train of 
means to secure a little conversation! 

Nature. 



June gth. 
These roses under my window make 
no reference to former roses or to better 
ones; they are for what they are; they 
exist with God to-day. There is no time 
to them. There is simply the rose; it is 
perfect in every moment of its existence. 
Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole 



198 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

life acts; in the full-blown flower 
there is no more; in the leafless root 
there is no less. Its nature is satisfied 
and it satisfies nature in all moments 
alike. There is no time to it. But man 
postpones or remembers; he does not 
live in the present, but with reverted 
eye laments the past, or, heedless of 
the riches that surround him, stands on 
tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot 
be happy and strong until he too lives 
with nature in the present, above time. 

Self-Eeliance. 



June ioth. 

To finish the moment, to find the jour- 
ney's end in every step of the road, to live 
the greatest number of good hours, is 
wisdom. It is not the part of men, but 



FROM EMERSON. 199 

of fanatics, or of mathematicians, if you 
will, to say, that, the shortness of life con- 
sidered, it is not worth caring whether 
for so short a duration we were sprawl- 
ing in want, or sitting high. Since our 
office is with moments, let us husband 
them. Five minutes of to-day are worth 
as much to me as five minutes in the next 
millennium. Let us be poised, and wise, 
and our own, to-day. Let us treat the 
men and women well: treat them as if 
they were real: perhaps they are. 

Experience. 

June nth. 
The walls of rude minds are scrawled 
all over with facts, with thoughts. They 
shall one day bring a lantern and read the 
inscriptions. 

Intellect. 



200 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

Each truth that a writer acquires is a 
lantern which he instantly turns full on 
what facts and thoughts lay already in 
his mind, and behold, all the mats and 
rubbish which had littered his garret be- 
come precious. . . . Men say, where 
did he get this? and think there was 
something divine in his life. But no; 
they have myriads of facts just as good, 
would they only get a lamp to ransack 
their attics withal. 

Ibid. 



June 1 2th. 
It is true that the discerning intellect 
of the world is always greatly in advance 
of the creative, so that there are many 
competent judges of the best book, and 
few writers of the best books. 

Intellect. 



FROM EMERSON. 201 

For notwithstanding our utter inca- 
pacity to produce anything like Hamlet 
and Othello, see the perfect reception 
this wit and immense knowledge of life 

and liquid eloquence find in us all. 

IUd. 

June ijth. 
Towards all this external evil the man 
within the breast assumes a warlike at- 
titude, and affirms his ability to cope 
single-handed with the infinite army of 
enemies. To this military attitude of 
the soul we give the name of Heroism. 
Its rudest form is the contempt for safety 
and ease, which makes the attractiveness 
of war. It is a self-trust which slights 
the restraints of prudence, in the pleni- 
tude of its energy and power to repair 
the harms it may suffer. 

Heroism. 



202 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

June 14th. 

The inevitable morning 

Finds them who in cellars be, 

And be sure the all-loving Nature 

Will smile in a factory. 

Yon ridge of purple landscape, 

Yon sky between the walls, 

Hold all the hidden wonders 

In scanty intervals. 

Alas, the sprite that haunts us 

Deceives our rash desire, 

It whispers of the glorious gods, 

And leaves us in the mire: 

We cannot learn the cipher 

That's writ upon our cell, 

Stars help us by a mystery 

Which we could never spell. 

The World-Soul. 



FROM EMERSON. 203 

June 15th. 
Thus is the universe alive. All things 
are moral. That soul which within us 
is a sentiment, outside of us is a law. 
We feel its inspirations; out there in 
history we can see its fatal strength. It 
is almighty. All nature feels its grasp. 
" It is in the world, and the world was 
made by it." It is eternal but it enacts 
itself in time and space. Justice is not 
postponed. A perfect equity adjusts its 
balance in all parts of life. Of ku$oi Acd? 
del eunhrouffi. The dice of God are al- 
ways loaded. 

Compensation. 

June 16th. 
The world looks like a multiplication- 
table, or a mathematical equation, which, 
turn it how you will, balances itself. 
Take what figure you will, its exact 



204 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

value, nor more nor less, still returns to 
you. Every secret is told, every crime is 
punished, every virtue rewarded, every 
wrong redressed, in silence and certainty. 

Compensation. 

June iyth. 

Valor consists in the power of self- 
recovery, so that a man cannot have his 
flank turned, cannot be out generalled, 
but put him where you will, he stands. 

This can only be by his preferring truth 
to his past apprehension of truth. 

Circles. 

June 1 8th. 
Bookworm, break this sloth urbane; 
A greater Spirit bids thee forth, 
Than the gray dreams which thee detain. 
Mark how the climbing Oreads 
Beckon thee to their arcades; 



FROM EMERSON. 205 

Youth, for a moment free as they, 
Teach thy feet to feel the ground, 
Ere yet arrive the wintry day 
When Time thy feet has bound. 
Accept the bounty of thy birth ; 
Taste the lordship of the earth. 

Monadnoc. 

Alas for youth 1 'tis gone in wind, — 
Happy he who spent it well. 

From the Persian of Hafiz. 

June igth. 
Yes, excellent, but remember that no 
society can ever be so large as one man. 
He, in his friendship, in his natural and 
momentary associations, doubles or mul- 
tiplies himself; but in the hour in which 
he mortgages himself to two or ten or 
twenty, he dwarfs himself below the 
stature of one. 



206 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

But the men of less faith could not 
thus believe, and to such, concert ap- 
pears the sole specific of strength. I 
have failed, and you have failed, but per- 
haps together we shall not fail. 

New England Reformers, 



June 20th. 

But concert is neither better nor worse, 
neither more nor less potent than indi- 
vidual force. . . . What is the use of 
the concert of the false and the disunited ? 
There can be no concert in two where 
there is no concert in one. When the 
individual is not individual, but is dual ; 
when his thoughts look one way and his 
actions another; when his faith is trav- 
ersed by his habits; when his will, en- 
lightened by reason, is warped by his 



FROM EMERSON. 207 



sense; when with one hand he rows, and 
with the other backs water, what concert 
can be ? 

New England Reformers. 



June 2 1 si. 
A man passes for that he is worth. 
What he is engraves itself on his face, 
on his form, on his fortunes, in letters of 
light which all men may read but him- 
self. Concealment avails him nothing; 
boasting nothing. There is confession 
in the glances of our eyes; in our smiles; 
in salutations; and the grasp of hands. 
His sin bedaubs him, mars all his good 
impression. Men know not why they 
do not trust him; but they do not trust 
him. 

Spiritual Laws. 



208 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

June 22d. 
In countless upward-striving waves 
The moon-drawn tide- wave strives; 
In thousand far-transplanted grafts 
The parent fruit survives; 
So, in the new-born millions, 
The perfect Adam lives. 
Not less are summer-mornings dear 
To every child they wake, 
And each with novel life his sphere 
Fills for his proper sake. 

Nominalist and Realist. 

There is more difference in the quality 
of our pleasures than in the amount. 

Prudence. 

June 23d. 
The eye is the first circle; the horizon 
which it forms is the second; and 
throughout nature this primary picture is 



FROM EMERSON. 209 

repeated without end. It is the highest 
emblem in the cipher of the world. St. 
Augustine described the nature of God as 
a circle whose centre was everywhere 
and its circumference nowhere. . . . 
Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth 
that around every circle another can be 
drawn; that there is no end in nature, 
but every end is a beginning; that there 
is always another dawn risen on mid- 
noon, and under every deep a lower deep 

opens. Circles. 

June 24th. 
A word warm from the heart enriches 
me. I surrender at discretion. How 
death-cold is literary genius before this 
fire of life! These are the touches that 
reanimate my heavy soul, and give it 
eyes to pierce the dark of nature. 

Character. 



210 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

June 25th. 
Dear to us are those who love us — the 
swift moments we spend with them are 
the compensation for a great deal of 
misery; they enlarge our life; but dearer 
are those who reject us as unworthy, for 
they add another life: they build a 
heaven before us, whereof we had not 
dreamed, and thereby supply to us new 
powers out of the recesses of the spirit, 
and urge us to new and unattempted 
performances. 

Nominalist and Realist. 

June 26th. 
The influence of the senses has in most 
men overpowered the mind to that de- 
gree that the walls of time and space 
have come to look solid, real and insur- 
mountable; and to speak with levity of 



FROM EMERSON. 211 

these limits is, in the world, the sign of 
insanity. Yet time and space are but in- 
verse measures of the force of the soul. 
A man is capable of abolishing them 
both. The spirit sports with time — 

Can crowd eternity into an hour, 
Or stretch an hour to eternity. 

The Over- Soul. 

June 2jth. 
Knowledge this man prizes best 
Seems fantastic to the rest, 
Pondering shadows, colors, clouds, 
Grass buds, and caterpillars' shrouds, 
Boughs on which the wild bees settle, 
Tints that spot the violet's petal. 
Why nature loves the number five, 

And why the star-form she repeats, 
Lover of all things alive, 

Wonderer at all he meets, 



212 s BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

Wonderer chiefly at himself, — 
Who can- tell him what he is, 

Or how meet in human elf 
Coming and past eternities ? 

Wood Notes. 



June 28th. 

It has been said that "common souls 
pay with what they do, nobler souls 
with that which they are." And why ? 
Because a soul living from a great depth 
of being, awakens in us by. its actions 
and words, by its very looks and man- 
ners, the same power and beauty that a 
gallery of sculpture or of pictures are 
wont to animate. . . . The true poem 
is the poet's mind; the true ship is the 
ship-builder. 

History. 



FROM EMERSON. 213 

June 29th. 

When we see a soul whose acts are 
all regal, graceful and pleasant as roses, 
we must thank God that such things can 
be and are, and not turn sourly on the 
angel and say "Crump is a better man 
with his grunting resistance to all his 
native devils." 

Spiritual Laws. 

The prosperous and beautiful 
To me seem not to wear 
The yoke of conscience masterful, 
Which galls me everywhere. 

The Park. 

June joth. 
A thrill passes through all men at the 
reception of new truth, or at the per- 
formance of a great action, which comes 
out of the heart of nature. In these 



214 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

communications the power to see is not 
separated from the will to do, but the 
insight proceeds from obedience, and the 
obedience proceeds from a joyful per- 
ception. 

The Over-Soul. 

Let us lie low in the Lord's power and 
learn that truth alone makes rich and 
great. 

Spiritual Laws. 



JULY. 



July ist. 
The simplicity of nature is not that 
which may easily be read, but is inex- 
haustible. The last analysis can no wise 
be made. We judge of a man's wis- 
dom by his hope, knowing that the per- 
ception of the inexhaustibleness of na- 
ture is an immortal youth. 

Spiritual Laws. 

The soul's communication of truth is 
the highest event in nature. 

The Over-Soul. 

July 2d. 
The waves unashamed 

In difference sweet, 
Play glad with the breezes, 

Old playfellows meet. 

217 



218 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

The journeying atoms,' 

Primordial wholes, 
Firmly draw, firmly drive, 

By their animate poles. 
Sea, earth, air, sound, silence, 

Plant, quadruped, bird, 
By one music enchanted, 

One deity stirred, 
Each the other adorning, 

Accompany still; 
Night veileth the morning, 

The vapor the hill. 

The Sphinx, 

July 3d. 
Our young people are diseased with 
the theological problems of original sin, 
origin of evil, predestination and the 
like. These never presented a practical 
difficulty to any man, — never darkened 
across any man's road who did not go 



FROM EMERSON. 219 

out of his way to seek them. These 
are the soul's mumps and measles and 
whooping-coughs, and those who have 
not caught them cannot describe their 
health or prescribe the cure. A simple 
mind will not know these enemies. 

/Spiritual Laws. 

July 4th. 
See the power of national emblems. 
Some stars, lilies, leopards, a crescent, a 
lion, an eagle, or other figure, which 
came into credit God knows how, on an 
old rag of bunting, blowing in the wind, 
on a fort, at the ends of the earth, shall 
make the blood tingle under the rudest, 
or the most conventional exterior. The 
people fancy they hate poetry, and they 
are all poets and mystics! 

The Poet. 



220 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

Who knows himself before he has 
been thrilled with indignation at an out- 
rage, or has heard an eloquent tongue, or 
has shared the throb of thousands in a 
national exultation or alarm ? 

History. 

America is a poem in our eyes; its 
ample geography dazzles the imagina- 
tion, and it will not wait long for 
metres. 

The Poet. 

July 5th. 
I'm going to my own hearth-stone 
Bosomed in yon green hills, alone, 
A secret nook in a pleasant land, 
Whose groves the frolic fairies planned; 
Where arches green the livelong day 
Echo the blackbird's roundelay, 
And vulgar feet have never trod 
A spot that is sacred to thought and God. 

Good-by. 



FROM EMERSON. 221 

July 6th. 

Truth tyrannizes over the unwilling 
members of the body. Faces never lie, 
it is said. No man need be deceived who 
will study the changes of expression. 
When a man speaks the truth in the 
spirit of truth, his eye is as clear as the 
heavens. 

Spiritual Laws. 



July yth. 

I serve you not, if you I follow, 
Shadow-like, o'er hill and hollow, 
And bend my fancy to your leading, 
All too nimble for my treading. 
When the pilgrimage is done, 
And we've the landscape overrun, 
I am bitter, vacant, thwarted, 
And your heart is unsupported. 



222 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

Vainly valiant, you have missed 

The manhood that should yours resist, 

Its complement. 

Etienne de la Boece. 

Friendship requires that rare mean 
betwixt likeness and unlikeness that 
piques each with the presence of power 
and of consent in the other party. . . . 
It turns the stomach, it blots the day- 
light; where I looked for a manly further- 
ance or at least a manly resistance, to 
find a mush of concession. Better be a 
nettle in the side of your friend than his 
echo. 

Friendship. 

July 8th. 
I hold our actual knowledge very 
cheap. Hear the rats in the wall, see the 
lizard on the fence, the fungus under 



FROM E3IEES0N. 223 

foot, the lichen on the log. What do I 
know sympathetically, morally, of either 
of these worlds of life ? As long as the 
Caucasian man, — perhaps longer, — these 
creatures have kept their counsel beside 
him, and there is no record of any word 
or sign that has passed from one to the 
other. Nay, what does history yet re- 
cord of the metaphysical annals of man ? 
What light does it shed on those mys- 
teries which we hide under the names 
Death and Immortality ? 

History. 



Every clod of loam below us 
Is a skull of Alexander; 
Oceans are the blood of princes; 
Desert sands the dust of beauties 

From the Persian of Hafiz. 



224 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

July pth. 

The law of benefits is a difficult chan- 
nel, which requires careful sailing, or 
rude boats. It is not the office of a man 
to receive gifts. How dare you give 
them ? We wish to be self-sustained. 
We do not quite forgive a giver. The 
hand that feeds us is in some danger of 
being bitten. We can receive anything 
from love, for that is a way of receiving 
it from ourselves; but not from any one 
who assumes to bestow. 

Gifts. 

It is a very onerous business, this of 
being served, and the debtor naturally 
wishes to give you a slap. 

IUd. 

July ioth. 
What we commonly call man, the eat- 
ing, drinking, planting, counting man, 



FROM EMERSON. 225 

does not, as we know him, represent 
himself, but misrepresents himself. Him 
we do not respect, but the soul, whose 
organ he is, would he let it appear 
through his action, would make our 
knees bend. When it breathes through 
his intellect, it is genius; when it breathes 
through his will, it is virtue; when it 
flows through his affection, it is love. 
And the blindness of the intellect begins 
when it would be something of itself. 
The weakness of the will begins when 
the individual would be something of 
himself. 

The Over-SovJ. 

July nth. 
If we will take the good we find, ask- 
ing no questions, we shall have heaping 
measures. The great gifts are not got 



226 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

by analysis. Everything good is on the 
highway. The middle region of our be- 
ing is the temperate zone. We may 
climb into the thin and cold realm of 
pure geometry and lifeless science, or 
sink into that of sensation. Between 
these extremes is the equator of life, of 
thought, of spirit, of poetry, — a narrow 
belt. Moreover, in popular experience 

everything good is on the highway. 

Experience. 

The mid-world is best. 

Ibid. 

July 1 2th. 
What a man does, that he has. What 
has he to do with hope or fear ? In him- 
self is his might. ... He may have 
his own. A man's genius, the quality 
that differences him from every other, 
the susceptibility to one class of influ- 



FROM EMERSON. 227 

ences, the selection of what is fit for him, 
the rejection of what is unfit, determines 
for him the character of the universe. 

Spiritual Laws. 

July 13th. 
If you act you show character; if you 
sit still you show it; if you sleep you 
show it. You think because you have 
spoken nothing when others spoke, and 
have given no opinion on the times, on 
the church, on slavery, on the college, on 
parties and persons, that your verdict is 
still expected with curiosity as a reserved 
wisdom. Far otherwise ; your silence an- 
swers very loud. You have no oracle to 
utter, and your fellow-men have learned 
that you cannot help them; for oracles 
speak. Doth not wisdom cry and un- 
derstanding put forth her voice ? 

Spiritual Laws. 



228 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

July 14th. 
To fill the hour,— that is happiness; to 
fill the hour, and leave no crevice for a 
repentance or an approval. We live 
amid surfaces, and the true art of life is 
to skate well on them. 

Experience. 

In skating over thin ice our safety is in 

our speed. 

Prudence. 

July 15th. 
We believe in ourselves, as we do not 
believe in others. We permit all things 
to ourselves, and that which we call sin 
in others, is experiment for us. 

Experience. 

As crabs, goats, scorpions, the balance 
and the water-pot lose all their mean- 
ness when hung as signs in the zodiac, 
so I can see my own vices without heat 



FROM EMERSON. 229 

in the distant persons of Solomon, Alci- 
biades, and Catiline. History. 

July 1 6th. 

Aught unsavory or unclean, 

Hath my insect never seen, 

But violets and bilberry bells, 

Maple sap and daffodils, 

Grass with green flag half-mast high, 

Succory to match the sky, 

* * # * 

All beside was unknown waste, 
All was picture as he passed. 

Wiser far than human seer, 
Yellow-breeched philosopher! 
Seeing only what is fair, 
Sipping only what is sweet, 
Thou dost mock at fate and care, 
Leave the chaff and take the wheat. 

The Humblebee. 



230 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

July iyth. 
Our strength grows out of our weak- 
ness. Not until we are pricked and 
stung and sorely shot at, awakens the 
indignation which arms itself with secret 
forces. A great man is always willing 
to be little. Whilst he sits on the 
cushion of advantages, he goes to sleep. 
When he is pushed, tormented, defeated, 
he has a chance to learn something; he 
has been put on his wits, on his man- 
hood; he has gained facts; learns his 
ignorance; is cured of the insanity of 
conceit; has got moderation and real 
skill. 

Compensation. 

July 1 8th. 
He who by force of will or of thought 
is great and overlooks thousands, has 
the responsibility of overlooking. With 



FROM EMERSON. 231 



every influx of light comes new danger. 
Has he light? he must bear witness to 
the light. 

Compensation. 

That which we are, we shall teach, 
not voluntarily but involuntarily. 
Thoughts come into our minds through 
avenues which we never left open, and 
thoughts go out of our minds through 
avenues which we never voluntarily 
opened. Character teaches over our 
head. 

The Over-Soul. 

July igth. 
Olympian bards who sung 
Divine Ideas below, 
Which always find us young, 
And always keep us so. 

Ode to Beauty. 



232 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

We are often made to feel that there is 
another youth and age than that which is 
measured from the year of our natural 
birth. Some thoughts always find us 
young, and keep us so. Such a thought 
is the love of the universal and eternal 
beauty. Every man parts from that con- 
templation with the feeling that it rather 
belongs to ages than to mortal life. The 
least activity of the intellectual powers 
redeems us in a degree from the influences 
of time. 

The Over-Soul. 

July 20th. 
See how the deep divine thought de- 
molishes centuries and millenniums, and 
makes itself present through all ages. Is 
the teaching of Christ less effective now 
than it was when first His mouth was 
opened ? The emphasis of facts and per- 



FROM EMERSON. 233 

sons to my soul has nothing to do with 
time. And so always the soul's scale is 
one; the scale of the senses and the un- 
derstanding is another. Before the great 
revelations of the soul, Time, Space and 
Nature shrink away. The Over-Soul. 

July 21 st. 
It is long ere we discover how rich we 
are. Our history, we are sure, is quite 
tame. We have nothing to write, noth- 
ing to infer. But our wiser years still run 
back to the despised recollections of child- 
hood, and always we are fishing up some 
wonderful article out of that pond; until 
by and by we begin to suspect that the 
biography of the one foolish person we 
know is, in reality, nothing less than the 
miniature paraphrase of the hundred vol- 
umes of the Universal History. 

Intellect. 



234 / BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 



not a 



r e fancy men are individuals; so are 
pumpkins ; but every pumpkin in the field 
goes through every point of pumpkin 
history. 

Nominalist and Realist. 

July 22d. 

We are students of words: we are 
shut up in schools, and colleges, and 
recitation-rooms, for ten or fifteen years, 
and come out at last with a bag of wind, 
a memory of words, and do not know a 
thing. We cannot use our hands, or our 
legs, or our eyes, or our arms. We do 
not know an edible root in the woods, 
we cannot tell our course by the stars, 
nor the hour of day by the sun. . . . 
The old English rule was, "All summer 
in the field, and all winter in the study. ,; 

New England Reformers. 



FROM EMERSON. 235 

July 23d. 

As a man thinketh so is he, and as a 
man chooseth so is he and so is nature. 
A man is a method, a progressive ar- 
rangement; a selecting principle, gather- 
ing his like to him wherever he goes. He 
takes only his own out of the multiplicity 
that sweeps and circles round him. 

Spiritual Laws. 

July 24th. 

I readily concede that in this, as in 
every period of intellectual activity, there 
has been a noise of denial and protest; 
much was to be resisted, much was to 
be got rid of by those who were reared 
in the old, before they could begin to 
affirm and to construct. Many a re- 
former perishes in his removal of rubbish 
— and that makes the offensiveness of 



236 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

the class. They are partial ; they are not 
equal to the work they pretend. ' They 
lose their way; in the assault on the 
kingdom of darkness, they expend all 
their energy on some accidental evil, 
and lose their sanity and power of 
benefit. 

New England Reformers. 

July 25th. 

We fool and prate, — 

Thou art silent and sedate. 

To million kinds and times one sense 

The constant mountain doth dispense, 

Shedding on all its snows and leaves, 

One joy it joys, one grief it grieves. 

Thou seest, O watchman tall! 

Our towns and races grow and fall, 

And imagest the stable Good 

For which we all our lifetime grope, 



FROM EMERSON. 237 



In shifting form the formless mind; 

And though the substance us elude, 

We in thee the shadow find. 

Monadnoc. 

July 26th. ■ 
Times of heroism are generally times 
of terror, but the day never shines in 
which this element may not work. The 
circumstances of man, we say, are his- 
torically somewhat better in this country 
and at this hour than perhaps ever be- 
fore. More freedom exists for culture. 
It will not now run against an axe at the 
first step out of the beaten track of opin- 
ion. But whoso is heroic will always 
find crises to try his edge. Human virtue 
demands her champions and martyrs, 
and the trial of persecution always pro- 
ceeds. 

Heroism. 



238 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

July 2jth. 
The secret of the illusoriness is in the 
necessity of a succession of moods or 
objects. Gladly we would anchor, but 
the anchorage is quicksand. This on- 
ward trick of nature is too strong for us : 
Pero si muove. When, at night, I look 
at the moon and stars, I seem stationary, 
and they to hurry. Our love of the real 
draws us to permanence, but health of 
body consists in circulation, and sanity of 
mind in variety or facility of association. 
We need change of objects. Dedication 

to one thought is quickly odious. 

Experience. 

July 28th. 
I must feel pride in my friend's ac- 
complishments as if they were mine, — 
wild, delicate, throbbing property in his 

Virtues. Friendship. 



FROM EMERSON. 239 

Our intellectual and active powers in- 
crease with our affection. 

Ibid. 

The only money of God is God. He 
pays never with anything less, or any- 
thing else. The only reward of virtue is 
virtue: the only way to have a friend is 
to be one. You shall not come nearer a 

man by getting into his house. 

Ibid. 

July 29th. 

Our spontaneous action is always the 
best. You cannot with your best delib- 
eration and heed come so close to any 
question as your spontaneous glance shall 
bring you. 

Intellect. 

All our progress is an unfolding, like 
the vegetable bud. You have first an 



240 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

instinct, then an opinion, then a knowl- 
edge-, as the plant has root, bud and fruit. 
Trust the instinct to the end, though you 
can render no reason. It is vain to hurry 
it. By trusting it to the end, it shall 
ripen into truth and you shall know why 
you believe. 

July 30th. 

The musing peasant lowly great 

Beside the forest water sate: 

The rope-like pine-roots crosswise 

grown 
Composed the network of his throne; 
The wide lake edged with sand and 

grass 
Was burnished to a floor of glass, 
Painted with shadows green and 
proud 



FROM EMERSON. 241 

Of the tree and of the cloud. 
He was the heart of all the scene, 
On him the sun looked more serene, 
To hill and cloud his face was 

known, 
It seemed the likeness of their own. 
They knew by secret sympathy 
The public child of earth and sky. 

Wood Notes. 



July j i st. 

Man was made of social earth, 

Child and brother from his birth; 

Tethered by a liquid cord 

Of blood through veins of kindred 

poured, 
Next his heart the fireside band 
Of mother, father, sister, stand ; 



242 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

Names from awful childhood heard, 

Throbs of a wild religion stirred, 

Their good was heaven, their harm was 

vice, 
Till Beauty came to snap all ties, 
The maid, abolishing the past, 
With lotus-wine obliterates 
Dear memory's stone-incarved traits, 
And by herself supplants alone 
Friends year by year more inly known. 
When her calm eyes opened bright, 
All were foreign in their light. 
It was ever the self-same tale, 
The old experience will not fail, — 
Only two in the garden walked, 
And with snake and seraph talked. 

Daemonic Love. 



AUGUST. 



August 1st. 

Still, still the secret presses, 
The nearing clouds draw down, 
The crimson morning flames into 
The fopperies of the town. 
Within, without, the idle earth 
Stars weave eternal rings, 
The sun himself shines heartily, 
And shares the joy he brings. 

The World-Soul. 

For the time of towns is tolled from 
the world by funereal chimes, but in na- 
ture the universal hours are counted by 
succeeding tribes of animals and plants, 
and by growth of joy on joy. 

The Poet 
245 



246 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

August 2d. 
There are always sunsets, and there is 
always genius; but only a few hours so 
serene that we can relish nature or 
criticism. The more or less depends on 
structure or temperament. Tempera- 
ment is the iron wire on which the beads 
are strung. 

Experience. 

August Jd. 
I hold it of little matter, 
Whether your jewel be of pure water, 
A rose diamond or a white, — 
But whether it dazzle me with light. 
I care not how you are drest, 
In the coarsest, or in the best, 
Nor whether your name is base or brave, 
Nor for the fashion of your behavior, — 
But whether you charm me, 



FROM EMERSON. 247 

Bid my bread feed, and my fire warm me, 

And dress up nature in your favor. 

One thing is forever good, 

That one thing is success. 

Fate. 

August 4th. 
I thought the sparrow's note from heaven, 
Singing at dawn on the alder bough; 
I brought him home in his nest at 

even; — 
He sings the song, but it pleases not 

now; 
For I did not bring home the river and 

sky; 
He sang to my ear; they sang to my 

eye. 
The delicate shells lay on the shore; 
The bubbles of the latest wave 
Fresh pearls to their enamel gave; 
And the bellowing of the savage sea 



248 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

Greeted their safe escape to me; 
I wiped away the weeds and foam, 
And fetched my sea-born treasures 

home; 
But the poor, unsightly, noisome things 
Had left their beauty on the shore 
With the sun, and the sand, and the wild 

uproar. 

Each and All. 

August 5th. 
Ages are thy days, 
Thou grand expressor of the present 

tense, 
And type of permanence, . . . 
Hither we bring 

Our insect miseries to the rocks, 
And the whole flight with pestering 

wing 
Vanish and end their murmuring. 



FROM EMERSON. 249 

Vanish beside these dedicated blocks, 
Which, who can tell what mason laid ? 

* * * * 

Mute orator! well-skilled to plead, 
And send conviction without phrase, 
Thou dost supply 
The shortness of our days, 
And promise, on thy Founder's truth, 
Long morrow to this mortal youth. 

Monadnoc. 

August 6th. 
If you can love me for what am, we 
shall be happier. If you cannot, I will 
still seek to deserve that you should. I 
must be myself. I will not hide my 
tastes or aversions. I will so trust that 
what is deep is' holy, that I will do 
strongly before the sun and moon what- 
ever inly rejoices me and the heart 



250 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

appoints. If you are noble, I will love 
you; if you are not, I will not hurt 
you and myself by hypocritical atten- 
tions. If you are true, but not in the 
same truth with me, cleave to your com- 
panions; I will seek my own. I do this 
not selfishly but humbly and truly. It is 
alike your interest, and mine, and all 
men's, however long we have dwelt in 

lies, to live in truth. 

Self-Beliance. 

August yth. 

There can be no excess to love, none 
to knowledge, none to beauty, when 
these attributes are considered in the 
purest sense. The soul refuses all limits. 
It affirms in man always an Optimism, 
never a Pessimism. 

His life is a progress, and not a station. 

Compensation. 



FROM EMERSON. 251 

The soul looketh steadily forwards, 
creating a world alway before her, leav- 
ing worlds alway behind her. She has 
no dates, nor rites, nor persons, nor 
specialties, nor men. The soul knows 
only the soul ; all else is idle weeds for 
her wearing. 

The Over-Soul. 

August 8th. 
We have seen or heard of many extra- 
ordinary young men who never ripened, 
or whose performance in actual life was 
not extraordinary. They enter an active 
profession and the forming Colossus 
shrinks to the common size of man. The 
magic they used was the ideal tendencies, 
which always makes the Actual ridicu- 
lous; but the tough world has its re- 
venge the moment they put their horses 
of the sun to plow in its furrow. They 



252 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

found no example and no companion, 
and their heart fainted. What then ? 
The lesson they gave irt their first aspi- 
rations is yet true; and a better valor and 
a purer truth shall one day execute their 
will and put the world to shame. 

Heroism. 

August gth. 
The horseman serves the horse, 

The neat-herd serves the neat, 
The merchant serves the purse, 

The eater serves his meat; 
Tis the day of the chattel, 

Web to weave, and corn to grind, 
Things are in the saddle, 

And ride mankind. 

Ode to Wm. H. Charming. 

Let us affront and reprimand the 
smooth mediocrity and squalid content- 
ment of the times, and hurl in the face 



FROM EMERSON. 253 

of custom and trade and office, the fact 
which is the upshot of all history, that 
there is a great responsible Thinker and 
Actor moving wherever moves a man; 
that a true man belongs to no other time 
or place, but is the centre of things. 

Self- Reliance. 

August ioth. 

But the doctrine of compensation is 
not the doctrine of indifferency. The 
thoughtless say, on hearing these repre- 
sentations, — What boots it to do well ? 
there is one event to do good and evil; 
if I gain any good I must pay for it; if 
I lose any good I gain some other; all 
actions are indifferent. 

There is a deeper fact in the soul than 
compensation, to wit, its own nature. 
The soul is not a compensation, but a 
life. The soul is. Under all this run- 



254 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

ning sea of circumstance, whose waters 
ebb and flow with perfect balance, lies 
the aboriginal abyss of real Being. 

Compensation. 

August nth. 
In my dealing with my child, my Latin 
and Greek, my accomplishments and my 
money stead me nothing. They are all 
lost on him: but as much soul as I have, 
avails. If I am merely wilful, he gives 
me a Rowland for an Oliver, sets his will 
against mine, one for one, and leaves 
me, if I please, the degradation of beat- 
ing him by my superiority of strength. 
But if I renounce my will and act for the 
soul, setting that up as umpire between 
us two, out of his young eyes looks the 
same soul; he reveres and loves with 
me. 

The Over-Soul. 



FROM EMERSON. 255 

August 12th. 
The path of things is silent. Will they 
suffer a speaker to go with them ? A 
spy they will not suffer; a lover, a poet, 
is the transcendency of their own na- 
ture, — him they will suffer. 

The Poet. 

Well, souls never touch their objects. 

An innavigable sea washes with silent 

waves between us and the things we aim 

at and converse with. 

Experience. 

August Ijth. 
In the sculptures of the Greeks, in the 
masonry of the Romans, and in the pic- 
tures of the Tuscan and Venetian mas- 
ters, the highest charm is the universal 
language they speak. A confession of 
moral nature, of purity, love, and hope, 
breathes from them all. That which we 



256 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

carry to them, the same we bring back 
more fairly illustrated in the memory. In 
proportion to his force, the artist will 
find in his work an outlet for his proper 
character. Art. 

August 14th. 
Acquiescence in the establishment, 
and appeal to the public, indicate in- 
firm faith, heads which are not clear, 
and which must see a house built, be- 
fore they can comprehend the plan of 
it. The wise man not only leaves out 
of his thought the many, but leaves out 
the few. Fountains, fountains, the self- 
moved, the absorbed, the commander 
because he is commanded, the assured, 
the primary, — they are good; for these 
announce the instant presence of su- 
preme power. 

Character. 



FROM EMERSON. 257 

August 15th. 

I prefer a tendency to stateliness, to an 
excess of fellowship. Let the incom- 
municable objects of nature and the met- 
aphysical isolation of man teach us in- 
dependence. Let us not be too much 
acquainted. 

Manners. 

This is myrrh and rosemary to keep 

the other sweet. Lovers should guard 

their strangeness. If they forgive too 

much, all slides into confusion and 

meanness. 

Ibid. 

The flower of courtesy does not very 
well bide handling. 

Ibid. 

August 16th. 
Why should we make it a point with 
our false modesty to disparage that man 



258 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

we are and that form of being assigned 
to us? A good man is contented. . . . 
Heaven is large, and affords space for all 
modes of love and fortitude. ... I 
desire not to disgrace the soul. The 
fact that I am here certainly shows me 
that the soul had need of an organ here. 
Shall I not assume the post? Shall I 
skulk and dodge and duck with my un- 
seasonable apologies and vain modesty 
and imagine my being here impertinent ? 

Spiritual Laws. 

August iyth. 
Would it not be better to begin higher 
up, — to serve the ideal before they eat 
and drink; to serve the ideal in eating 
and drinking, in drawing the breath, and 
in the functions of life ? . . . In nature, 
all is useful, all is beautiful. It is there- 



FROM EMERSON, 259 

fore beautiful because it is alive, mov- 
ing, reproductive; it is therefore use- 
ful because it is symmetrical and fair. 
Beauty will not come at the call of a 
legislature, nor will it repeat in England 
or America its history in Greece. It will 
come, as always, unannounced, and 
spring up between the feet of brave and 
earnest men. 

Art. 

August 18th. 
All the forms are fugitive, 
But the substances survive. 
Ever fresh the broad creation, 
A divine improvisation, 
From the heart of God proceeds, 
A single will, a million deeds. 
Once slept the world an egg of stone, 
And pulse, and sound, and light was none ; 



260 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

And God said, Throb; and there was 

motion, 
And the vast mass became vast ocean. 

Wood Notes. 



August ipth. 

Prayer is the contemplation of the facts 
of life from the highest point of view. 
It is the soliloquy of a beholding and 
jubilant soul. It is the spirit of God pro- 
nouncing His works good. But prayer 
as a means to effect a private end is theft 
and meanness. It supposes dualism and 
not unity in nature and consciousness. 
As soon as the man is at one with God, 
he will not beg. He will then see prayer 
in all action. The prayer of the farmer 
kneeling in his field to weed it, the 
prayer of the rower kneeling with the 



FROM EMERSON. 261 

stroke of his oar, are true prayers heard 

throughout nature, though for cheap 

ends. 

Self- Reliance. 

August 20th. 
In the book I read, the good thought 
returns to me, as every truth will, the 
image of the whole soul. To the bad 
thought which I find in it, the same soul 
becomes a discerning, separating sword, 
and lops it away. 

The Over-Soul. 

It is with a good book as it is with 
good company. Introduce a base person 
among gentlemen: it is all to no pur- 
pose: he is not their fellow. Every so- 
ciety protects itself. The company is 
perfectly safe, and he is not one of them, 
though his body is in the room. 

Spiritual Laws. 



262 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

August 21 St. 
This open channel to the highest life is 
the first and last reality, so subtle, so 
quiet, yet so tenacious, that although I 
have never expressed the truth, and al- 
though I have never heard the expression 
of it from any other, I know that the 
whole truth is here for me. What if I 
cannot answer your questions ? I am 
not pained that I cannot frame a reply to 
the question, What is the operation we 
call Providence ? There lies the unspoken 
thing, present, omnipresent. Every time 
we converse, we seek to translate it into 
speech, but whether we hit or whether 
we miss we have the fact. Every dis- 
course is an approximate answer; but it 
is of small consequence that we do not 
get it into verbs and nouns, while it abides 
for contemplation forever. 

New England Reformers. 



FROM EMERSON. 263 

August 22d. 
What is it men love in Genius, but its 
infinite hope, which degrades all it has 
done ? Genius counts all its miracles 
poor and short. Its own idea it never 
executed. The Iliad, the Hamlet, the 
Doric column, the Roman arch, the Gothic 
minister, -the German anthem, when they 
are ended, the master casts behind him. 
How sinks the song in the waves of mel- 
ody which the universe pours over his 
soul! Before that gracious Infinite, out 
of which he drew these few strokes, 
how mean they look, though the praises 
of the world attend them. 

New England Reformers. 

August 23d. 
Wilt thou not ope this heart to know 
What rainbows teach and sunsets show, 



264 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

Verdict which accumulates 

From lengthened scroll of human fates, 

Voice of earth to earth returned, 

Prayers of heart that inly burned ; 

Saying, what is excellent, 

As God lives, is permanent, 

Hearts are dust, hearts' loves remain, 

Heart's love will meet thee again. 

Threnody. 

August 24th. 

I take this evanescence and lubricity of 
all objects, which lets them slip through 
our fingers then when we clutch hardest, 
to be the most unhandsome part of our 
condition. Nature does not like to be 
observed, and likes that we should be her 
fools and playmates. We may have the 
sphere for our cricket-ball, but not a berry 
for our philosophy. 

Experience. 



FE03I EMERSON. 265 

There are moods in which we court 
suffering, in the hope that here, at least, 
we shall find reality, sharp peaks and 
edges of truth. ibid. 

August 25th. 
We pass for what we are. Character 
teaches above our wills. Men imagine 
that they communicate their virtue or 
vice only by overt actions, and do not see 
that virtue or vice emit a breath every 

moment. Self-Reliance. 

August 26th. 
Antaeus was suffocated by the grip of 
Hercules, but every time he touched his 
mother earth his strength was renewed. 
Man is the broken giant, and in all his 
weakness both his body and his mind are 
invigorated by habits of. conversation 

With nature. History. 



266 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

Whoso walketh in solitude, 

And inhabiteth the wood, 

Choosing light, wave, rock, and bird, 

Before the money-loving herd, 

Into that forester shall pass 

From these companions power and grace; 

Clean shall he be without, within, 

From the old adhering sin. 

Wood Notes. 

August 2jth. 
The unremitting retention of simple 
and high sentiments in obscure duties is 
hardening the character to that temper 
which will work with honor, if need be 
in the tumult, or on the scaffold. 

Heroism. 

Every thought which genius and piety 
throw into the world, alters the world. 
The gladiators in the lists of power feel, 



FROM EMERSON. 267 

through all their frocks of force and 
simulation, the presence of worth. I 
think the very strife of trade and ambi- 
tion are confession of this divinity; and 
successes in those fields are the poor 
amends, the fig-leaf with which the 
shamed soul attempts to hide its naked- 
ness. 

Politics. 

August 28th. 

Every violation of truth is not only a 
sort of suicide in the liar, but is a stab at 
the health of human society. On the 
most profitable lie the course of events 
presently lays a destructive tax; whilst 
frankness proves to be the best tactics, 
for it invites frankness, puts the parties 
on a convenient footing and makes their 
business a friendship. Trust men and 



268 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

they will be true to you; treat them 

greatly and they will show themselves 

great. 

Prudence. 

August 29th. 
And, beholding in many souls the traits 
of the divine beauty, and separating in 
each soul that which is divine from the 
taint which it has contracted in the world, 
the lover ascends to the highest beauty, 
to the love and knowledge of the Divin- 
ity, by steps on this ladder of created 

souls. 
Somewhat like this have the truly wise 

told us of love in all ages. 

Love. 

August joth. 
The difference between men is in their 
principle of association. Some men 



FROM EMERSON. 269 

classify objects by color and size and 
other accidents of appearance; others by 
intrinsic likeness, or by the relation of 
cause and effect. The progress of the 
intellect consists in the clearer vision of 
causes, which overlooks surface differ- 
ences. To the poet, to the philosopher, 
to the saint, all things are friendly and 
sacred, all events profitable, all days holy, 
all men divine. For the eye is fastened 
on the life, and slights the circumstance. 

History. 

August J I St. 
Not of adamant and gold 
Built He heaven stark and cold, 
No, but a nest of bending reeds, 
Flowering grass and scented weeds, 
Or like a traveler's fleeting tent, 
Or bow above the tempest pent, 



270 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

Built of tears and sacred flames, 
And virtue reaching to its aims; 
Built of furtherance and pursuing, 
Not of spent deeds, but of doing. 

Threnody, 



SEPTEMBER. 



September ist. 
" Fairest! choose the fairest members 
Of our lithe society; 
June's glories and September's 
Show our love and piety. 

"Thou shalt command us all, 
April's cowslip, summer's clover, 
To the gentian in the fall, 
Blue-eyed pet of blue-eyed lover. 

"O come, then, quickly come, 
We are budding, we are blowing, 
And the wind which we perfume 
Sings a tune that's worth thy knowing." 

To Ellen, at the South. 

Autumn's sunlit festivals. 

Hermione. 
273 



274 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

September 2d. 
The universe is the bride of the soul. 
AH private sympathy is partial. Two 
human beings are like globes, which can 
touch only in a point, and, whilst they 
remain in contact, all other points of each 
of the spheres are inert; their turn must 
also come, and the longer a particular 
union lasts, the more energy of ap- 
petency the parts not in union acquire. 

Experience. 

September }d. 

We can never see Christianity from 
the catechism: — from the pastures, from 
a boat in the pond, from amidst the 
songs of wood-birds we possibly may. 
Cleansed by the elemental light and 
wind, steeped in the sea of beautiful 
forms which the field offers us, we 



FROM EMERSON. 275 

may chance to cast a right glance back 

upon biography. Christianity is rightly 

dear to the best of mankind; yet was 

there never a young philosopher whose 

breeding had fallen into the Christian 

church by whom that brave text of 

Paul's was not specially prized, "Then 

shall also the Son be subject unto Him 

who put all things under Him, that God 

may be all in all." 

Circles, 

September 4th. 

A mind might ponder its thought for 
ages and not gain so much self-knowl- 
edge as the passion of love shall teach it 

in a day. History. 

The like force has the passion over all 
his nature. It expands the sentiment; it 
makes the clown gentle and gives the 



276 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

coward heart. Into the most pitiful and 
abject it will infuse a heart and courage 
to defy the world, so only it have the 
countenance of the beloved object. In 
giving him to another it still more gives 
him to himself. He is a new man, with 
new perceptions, new and keener pur- 
poses, and a religious solemnity of char- 
acter and aims. He does not longer ap- 
pertain to his family and society. He 
is somewhat. He is a person. He is a 

soul. 

Love. 

September 5th. 

The advancing man discovers how 
deep a property he hath in literature, — in 
all fable as well as in all history. He 
finds that the poet was no odd fellow 
who described strange and impossible 



FROM EMERSON. 277 

situations, but that universal man wrote 
by his pen a confession true for one and 
true for all. 

History. 

Now that which is inevitable in the 
work has a higher charm than individual 
talent can ever give, inasmuch as the 
artist's pen or chisel seems to have been 
held and guided by a gigantic hand to 
inscribe a line in the history of the 
human race. 

Art. 

September 6th. 
Heaven's numerous hierarchy span 
The mystic gulf from God to man. 

Tlirenody, 

These are the voices which we hear in 
solitude, but they grow faint and inaudi- 
ble as we enter into the world. 

Self-Reliance. 



278 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

September yth. 
Life wears to me a visionary face. 
Hardest, roughest action is visionary 
also. It is but a choice between soft 
and turbulent dreams. People disparage 
knowing and the intellectual life, and 
urge doing. I am very content with 
knowing, if only I could know. That is 
an august entertainment, and would 
suffice me a great while. To know a 
little, would be worth the expense of 
this world. 

Experience. 



September 8th. 

What care I, so they stand the same, — 
Things of the heavenly mind, — 

How long the power to give them fame 
Tarries yet behind ? 



FROM EMERSON. 279 

Thus far to-day your favors reach, 
O fair, appeasing Presences! 

Ye taught my lips a single speech, 
And a thousand silences. 



Space grants beyond his fated road 
No inch to the god of day, 

And copious language still bestowed 
One word, no more, to say. 

Merops. 



September pth. 

Him nature giveth for defense 

His formidable innocence, 

The mountain sap, the shells, the sea, 

All spheres, all stones, his helpers be; 

He shall never be old, 

Nor his fate shall be foretold ; 



280 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

He shall see the speeding year, 
Without wailing, without fear; 
He shall be happy in his love, 
Like to like shall joyful prove. 

Wood Notes. 

He is not of counted age, 
Meaning always to be young. 

Initial Love. 

September ioth. 
Behind thee leave thy merchandise, 
Thy churches, and thy charities, 
And leave thy peacock wit behind; 
Enough for thee the primal mind 
That flows in streams, that breathes in 

wind. 
Leave all thy pedant lore apart; 
God hid the whole world in thy heart. 
Love shuns the sage, the child it crowns, 
And gives them all who all renounce. 

Wood Notes. 



FROM EMERSON. 281 

September nth. 

Men in all ways are better than they 

seem. They like flattery for the moment, 

but they know the truth for their own. It 

is a foolish cowardice which keeps us 

from trusting them, and speaking to them 

rude truth. They resent your honesty 

for an instant, they will thank you for it 

always. 

New England Reformers. 

September 12th. 

To make habitually a new estimate, 

— that is elevation. 

Spiritual Laws. 

September 13th. 
Character is centrality, the impossibility 
of being displaced or overset. A man 
should give us a sense of mass. 

Character. 



282 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

A man who stands united with his 
thought conceives magnificently of him- 
self. He is conscious of a universal suc- 
cess, even though bought by uniform 
particular failures. No advantages, no 
powers, no gold or force, can be any 
match for him. 

Friendship. 

September 14th. 
But the discomfort of unpunctuality, 
of confusion of thought about facts, in- 
attention to the wants of to-morrow, is 
of no nation. The beautiful laws of time 
and space, once dislocated by our inapti- 
tude, are holes and dens. If the hive be 
disturbed by rash and stupid hands, in- 
stead of honey it will yield us bees. Our 
words and actions to be fair must be 
timely. A gay and pleasant sound is the 
whetting of the scythe in the mornings 



FROM EMERSON'. 283 

of June; yet what is more lonesome and 
sad than the sound of a whetstone or 
mower's rifle when it is too late in the 
season to make hay ? Scatter-brained 
and "afternoon men" spoil much more 
than their own affair in spoiling the tem- 
per of those who deal with them. 

Prudence. 

September 15th. 
Good-bye, proud world, I'm going home, 

Thou'rt not my friend, and I'm not thine ; 
Long through thy weary crowds I roam ; 

A river-ark on the ocean brine, 
Long I've been tossed like the driven foam, 
But now, proud world, I'm going home. 

Good-bye to Flattery's fawning face, 
To Grandeur, with his wise grimace, 
To upstart Wealth's averted eye, 
To supple Office low and high, 



284 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

To crowded halls, to court, and street, 
To frozen hearts, and hasting feet, 
To those who go, and those who come, 
Good-bye, proud world, I'm going home. 

Good-Bye. 

September 16th. 

The rushing metamorphosis 

Dissolving all that fixture is, 

Melts things that be to things that seem, 

And solid nature to a dream. 

Oh, listen to the under song, 

The ever old, the ever young, 

And far within those cadent pauses, 

The chorus of the ancient Causes. 

Wood Notes. 

September 17th. 
The lesson is forcibly taught by these 
observations that our life might be much 
easier and simpler than we make it, that 



FROM EMERSON. 285 

the world might be a happier place than 
it is, that there is no need of struggles, 
convulsions, and despairs, of the wring- 
ing of the hands and the gnashing of the 
teeth; that we miscreate our own evils. 
We interfere with the optimism of na- 
ture, for whenever we get this vantage- 
ground of the past, or of a wiser mind in 
the present, we are able to discern that 
we are begirt with spiritual laws which 

execute themselves. 

Spiritual Laws. 

September i8ih. 
The face of external nature teaches the 
same lesson with calm superiority. Na- 
ture will not have us fret and fume. She 
does not like our benevolence or our 
learning much better than she likes our 
frauds and wars. When we come out of 



286 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

the caucus, or the bank, or the Abolition 

Convention, or the Temperance meeting, 

or the Transcendental club into the fields 

and woods, she says to us, " So hot ? my 

little sir." 

Spiritual Laws. 

September ipth. 
O poet! . . . this is the reward: 
that the ideal shall be real to thee, and 
the impressions of the actual world shall 
fall like summer rain, copious, but not 
troublesome, to thy invulnerable essence. 
Thou shalt have the whole land for thy 
park and manor, the sea for thy bath and 
navigation, without tax and without 
envy; the woods and the rivers thou shalt 
own ; and thou shalt possess that wherein 
others are only tenants and boarders. 
Thou true land-lord! sea-lord! air-lord! 

The Poet. 



FROM EMERSON. 287 



September 20th. 
But genius is religious. It is a larger 
imbibing of the common heart. It is not 
anomalous, but more like and not less 
like other men. There is in all great poets 
a wisdom of humanity which is superior to 
any talents they exercise. . . . The soul 
is superior to its knowledge, wiser than 
any of its works. The great poet makes 
us feel our own wealth. 

The Over-Soul. 

September 21st. 
Of what use is fortune or talent to a 
cold and defective nature? Who cares 
what sensibility or discrimination a man 
has at some time shown, if he falls asleep 
in his chair ? or if he laugh and giggle ? or 
if he apologize ? or is affected with ego- 
tism ? or thinks of his dollar ? or cannot 

gO by food ? Experience. 



288 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

September 22d. 
I am thankful for small mercies. I 
compared notes with one of my friends 
who expects everything of the universe, 
and is disappointed when anything is less 
than the best, and I found that I begin at 
the other extreme, expecting nothing, and 
am always full of thanks for moderate 
goods. 

Experience. 

September 23d. 
It is strange how painful is the actual 
world — the painful kingdom of time and 
place. There dwells care and canker and 
fear. With thought, with the ideal, is 
immortal hilarity, the rose of joy. Round 
it all the muses sing. But with names 
and persons and the partial interests of 
to-day and yesterday is grief. 

Love. 



FROM EMERSON. 289 

September 24th. 
As in dreams, so in the scarcely less fluid 
events of the world, every man sees him- 
self in colossal, without knowing that it 
is himself that he sees. The good which 
he sees, compared to the evil which he 
sees, is as his own good to his own evil. 

Spiritual Laws. 

The covetousness or the malignity 
which saddens me, when I ascribe it to 
society, is my own. I am always envi- 
roned by myself. 

Character. 

September 25th. 

God screens us evermore from pre- 
mature ideas. Our eyes are holden that 
we cannot see things that stare us in the 
face, until the hour arrives when the 
mind is ripened, — then we behold them, 



290 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

and the time when we saw them not is 
like a dream. 

Spiritual Laws. 

September 26th. 

But it is impossible that the creative 

power should exclude itself. Into every 

intelligence there is a door which is 

never closed, through which the creator 

passes. The intellect, seeker of absolute 

truth, or the heart, lover of absolute 

good, intervenes for our succor, and at 

one whisper of these high powers, we 

awake from ineffectual struggles with 

this nightmare. 

Experience. 

September iyth. 

The voice of the Almighty saith, " Up 

and onward forevermore! " We cannot 

stay amid the ruins. 

Compensation. 



FROM EMERSON. 291 

What remedy ? Life must be lived on 
a higher plane. We must go up to a 
higher platform, to which we are always 
invited to ascend; there the whole as- 
pect of things changes. 

New England Reformers. 



September 28th. 

He will weave no longer a spotted life 
of shreds and patches, but he will live 
with a divine unity. He will cease from 
what is base and frivolous in his own 
life and be content with all places and 
any service he can render. He will 
calmly front the morrow in the negli- 
gency of that trust which carries God 
with it and so hath already the whole 
future in the bottom of the heart. 

The Over-Soul. 



292 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

September 29th. 

The specific stripes may follow late 
after the offense, but they follow because 
they accompany it. Crime and punish- 
ment grow out of one stem. Punish- 
ment is a fruit that unsuspected ripens 
within the flower of the pleasure which 
concealed it. Cause and effect, means 
and ends, seed and fruit, cannot be 
severed; for the effect already blooms in 
the cause, the end preexists in the 
means, the fruit in the seed. 

Compensation. 



September joth. 

Why should I keep holiday, 
When other men have none ? 

Why but because when these are gay, 
I sit and mourn alone. 



FROM EMERSON. 293 

And why when mirth unseals all 
tongues 
Should mine alone be dumb ? 
Ah! late I spoke to silent throngs, 
And now their hour is come. 

Compensation. 



OCTOBER. 



October ist. 
Life is a festival only to the wise. 
Seen from the nook and chimney-side of 
prudence, it wears a ragged and dan- 
gerous front. 

Heroism. 

Who dear to God on earthly sod 

No corn-grain plants, 
The same is glad that life is had, 

Though corn he wants. 

From the Persian of Hafiz. 

October 2d. 
One man's justice is another's injustice; 
one man's beauty another's ugliness; one 
man's wisdom another's folly; as one 
beholds the same objects from a higher 
point of view. One man thinks justice 
consists in paying debts, and has no 

297 



298 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

measure in his abhorrence of another 
who is very remiss in this duty and 
makes the creditor wait tediously. But 
that second man has his own way of 
looking at things; asks himself which 
debt must I pay first, the debt to the rich, 
or the debt to the poor ? the debt of 
money, or the dejDt of thought to man- 
kind, of genius to nature ? 

Circles. 

October 3d. 
Tax not my sloth that I 

Fold my arms beside the brook; 
Each cloud that floated in the sky 

Writes a letter in my book. 

Chide me not, laborious band, 
For the idle flowers I brought; 

Every aster in my hand 
Goes home loaded with a thought. 



FROM EMERSON. 299 

There was never mystery, 
But 'tis figured in the flowers, 

Was never secret history, 
But birds tell it in the bowers. 

One harvest from thy field 

Homeward brought the oxen strong; 
A second crop thine acres yield, 

Which I gather in a song. 

The Apology. 



October 4th. 
The exclusionist in religion does not 
see that he shuts the door of heaven on 
himself, in striving to shut out others. 
Treat men as pawns and ninepins and 
you shall suffer as well as they. If you 
leave out their heart, you shall lose your 
own. 

Compensation. 



300 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

October 5th. 
It is a proof of the shallowness of the 
doctrine of beauty, as it lies in the minds 
of our amateurs, that men seem to have 
lost the perception of the instant depend- 
ence of form upon soul. 

The Poet. 

Beautifully shines a spirit through the 
bruteness and toughness of matter. 
Alone omnipotent, it converts all things 
to its own end. ... Nothing is so fleet- 
ing as form. 

History. 

October 6th. 
A political orator wittily compared our 
party promises to western roads, which 
opened stately enough, with planted 
trees on either side, to tempt the trav- 
eler, but soon became narrow and nar- 



FROM EMERSON. 301 

rower, and ended in a squirrel-track, and 

ran up a tree. So does culture with us ; 

it ends in headache. 

Experience. 

October yth. 
The pairing of the birds is an idyl, not 
tedious as our idyls are; a tempest is a 
rough ode, without falsehood or rant: a 
summer, with its harvest sown, reaped, 
and stored, is an epic song, subordinating 
how many admirably executed parts. 
Why should not the symmetry and truth 
that modulate these, glide into our spirits, 
and we participate the invention of na- 
ture ? 

The Poet. 

October 8th. 
Past utterance and past belief, 
And past the blasphemy of grief, 
The mysteries of nature's heart, — 



302 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

And though no muse can these impart, 
Throb thine with nature's throbbing 

breast, 
And all is clear from east to west. 

Threnody. 

October gth. 

Each of these landlords walked amidst 
his farm, 

Saying, "Tis mine, my children's, and 
my name's. 

How sweet the west wind sounds in my 
own trees; 

How graceful climb those shadows on 
my hill; 

I fancy those pure waters and the flags 

Know me as does my dog: we sym- 
pathize, 

And, 1 affirm, my actions smack of the 
soil." 



FB03I E3IEBS0N. 303 

Where are those men ? Asleep beneath 
their grounds, 

And strangers, fond as they, their fur- 
rows plough. 

Earth laughs in flowers to see her boast- 
ful boys 

Earth proud, proud of the earth which is 
not theirs ; 

Who steer the plough, but cannot steer 

their feet 

Clear of the grave. 

Hamatreya. 

October ioth. 
Citizens, thinking after the laws of 
arithmetic, consider the inconvenience of 
receiving strangers at their fireside, 
reckon narrowly the loss of time and the 
unusual display: the soul of a better 
quality thrusts back the unseasonable 
economy into the vaults of life, and says, 



304 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

I will obey the God, and the sacrifice and 
the fire He will provide. 

Heroism. 

October nth. 
The magnanimous know very well 
that they who give time, or money, or 
shelter, to the stranger, — so it be done 
for love and not for ostentation, — do, as 
it were, put God under obligation to 
them, so perfect are the compensations 
of the universe. In some way the time 
they seem to lose is redeemed and the 
pains they seem to take remunerate them- 
selves. These men fan the flame of hu- 
man love and raise the standard of civil 
virtue among mankind. But hospitality 
must be for service and not for show, or 
it pulls down the host. 

Heroism. 



FROM EMERSON. 305 

October 12th. 

Has nature covenanted with me that I 
should never appear to disadvantage, 
never make a ridiculous figure ? Let us 
be generous of our dignity as well as of 
our money. Greatness once and for- 
ever has done with opinion. We tell 
our charities, not because we wish to be 
praised for them, not because we think 
they have great merit, but for our justi- 
fication. It is a capital blunder; as you 
discover when another man recites his 

charities. 

Heroism. 

October ijth. 

If we live truly, we shall see truly. It 

is as easy for the strong man to be 

strong, as it is for the weak to be weak. 

When we have new perception, we shall 



306 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

gladly disburthen the memory of its 

hoarded treasures as old rubbish. When 

a man lives with God, his voice shall be 

as sweet as the murmur of the brook and 

the rustle of the corn. 

Self-Reliance, 



October 14th. 

Never a sincere word was utterly lost. 
Never a magnanimity fell to the ground. 
Always the heart of man greets and ac- 
cepts it unexpectedly. 

Spiritual Laws. 



Thee, dear friend, a brother soothes, 
Not with flatteries, but truths, 
Which tarnish not, but purify 
To light which dims the morning's eye. 

To Rhea. 



FROM EMERSON. 307 

October 15th. 
Consider whether you have satisfied 
your relations to father, mother, cousin, 
neighbor, town, cat and dog; whether 
any of these can upbraid you. But I 
may also neglect this reflex standard and 
absolve me to myself. I have my own 
stern claims and perfect circle. It denies 
the name of duty to many offices that 
are called duties. But if I can discharge 
its debts it enables me to dispense with 
the popular code. If any one imagines 
that this law is lax, let him keep its com- 
mandment one day. 

Self-Reliance. 



October 16th. 

Thought makes everything fit for use. 

The Poet. 



308 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

October lyth. 
He that loveth maketh his own the 
grandeur he loves. 

Compensation. 

October 18th. 

What is that abridgement and selec- 
tion we observe in all spiritual activity, 
but itself the creative impulse ? for it is 
the inlet of that higher illumination 
which teaches to convey a larger sense 
by simpler symbols. What is a man but 
nature's finer success in self-explication ? 
What is a man but a finer and compacter 
landscape than the horizon figures; na- 
ture's eclecticism ? and what is his 
speech, his love of painting, love of na- 
ture, but a still finer success ? all the 
weary miles and tons of space and bulk 
left out, and the spirit or moral of it con- 



FROM EMERSON. 309 

tracted into a musical word, or the most 
cunning stroke of the pencil ? 

Art. 

October igth. 
Every man's progress is through a suc- 
cession of teachers, each of whom seems 
at the time to have a superlative influ- 
ence, but it at last gives place to a new. 
Frankly let him accept it all. Jesus says, 
Leave father, mother, house and lands, 
and follow Me. Who leaves all, receives 
more. This is as true intellectually as 

morally. 

Intellect. 

Thus there is no sleep, no pause, no 
preservation, but all things renew, ger- 
minate and spring. Why should we im- 
port rags and relics into the new hour ? 

Circles. 



310 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

October 20th. 
Defect in manners is usually the defect 
of fine perceptions. Men are too coarsely 
made for the delicacy of beautiful car- 
riage and customs. It is not quite suffi- 
cient to good breeding, a union of kind- 
ness and independence. We impera- 
tively require a perception of, and a 
homage to beauty in our companions. 
Other virtues are in request in the field 
and workyard, but a certain degree of 
taste is not to be spared in those we sit 
with. I could better eat with one who 
did not respect the truth or the laws, 
than with a sloven and unpresentable 
person. Moral qualities rule the world, 
but at short distances, the senses are 
despotic. 

Manners. 



FROM EMERSON. 311 

October 21st. 
Askest, " How long thou shalt stay ? " 

Devastator of the day ! 

The Visit. 



At times the whole world seems to be 
in conspiracy to importune you with em- 
phatic trifles. Friend, client, child, sick- 
ness, fear, want, charity, all knock at 
once at thy closet door and say, " Come 

out unto us." 

Self- Reliance. 



October 22d. 
Or for service or delight, 
Hearts to hearts their meaning show, 
Sum their long experience, 
And import intelligence. 

The Visit. 



312 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

A mutual understanding is ever the 
firmest chain. Nothing seems so easy as 
to speak and to be understood. Yet a 
man may come to find that the strongest 
of defenses and of ties, — that he has 
been understood; and he who has re- 
ceived an opinion may come to find it the 
most inconvenient of bonds. 

Spiritual Laws. 

October 23d. 
But in all unbalanced minds the classi- 
fication is idolized, passes for the end and 
not for a speedily exhaustible means, so 
that the walls of the system blend to 
their eye in the remote horizon with the 
walls of the universe; the luminaries of 
heaven seem to them hung on the arch 
their master built. They cannot imagine 
how you aliens have any right to see— 



FROM EMERSON. 313 

how you can see; " It must be somehow 
that you stole the light from us." They 
do not yet perceive that light, unsyste- 
matic, indomitable, will break into any 
cabin, even into theirs. 

Self- Reliance. 

October 24th. 
If the auguries of the prophesying 
heart shall make themselves good in 
time, the man who shall be born, whose 
advent men and events prepare and fore- 
show, is one who shall enjoy his connec- 
tion with a higher life, with the man 
within man; shall destroy distrust by his 
trust, shall use his native but forgotten 
methods, shall not take counsel of flesh 
and blood, but shall rely on the Law 
alive and beautiful, which works over 
heads and under our feet. 

New England Reformers. 



314 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 



October 25th. 
"Work," it saith to man, "in every 
hour, paid or unpaid, see only that thou 
work, and thou canst not escape the re- 
ward: whether thy work be fine or 
coarse, planting corn, or writing epics, 
so only it be honest work, done to thine 
own approbation, it shall earn a reward 
to these senses as well as to the thought: 
no matter how often defeated, you are 
born to victory. The reward of a thing 
well done, is to have done it." 

New England Reformers. 

Perfect paired as eagle's wings, 
Justice is the rhyme of things. 

Merlin. 

October 26th. 
But see the facts nearly and these 
mountainous inequalities vanish. Love 



FROM EMERSON. 315 

reduces them as the sun melts the ice- 
berg in the sea. The heart and soul of 
all men being one, this bitterness of His 
and Mine ceases. His is mine. I am 

my brother and my brother is me. 

Compensation. 

October 2jth. 
What is best in each kind is an index 
of what should be the average of that 
thing. Love shows me the opulence of 
nature, by disclosing to me in my friend 
a hidden wealth, and I infer an equal 
depth of good in every other direction. 

Nominalist and Realist. 

For, rightly, every man is a channel 
through which heaven floweth, and, 
whilst I fancied I was criticising him, I 
was censuring or rather terminating my 
own soul. 

Ibid. 



316 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

October 28th. 
When private men shall act with orig- 
inal views, the lustre will be transferred 
from the actions of kings to those of 
gentlemen. 

Self-Reliance. 

Himself it was who wrote 

His rank, and quartered his own coat. 

There is no king nor sovereign state 

That can fix a hero's rate; 

Each to all is venerable. 

Astrsea. 

October 29th. 
The spurious prudence, making the 
senses final, is the god of sots and cow- 
ards, and is the subject of all comedy. 
It is nature's joke, and therefore liter- 
ature's. 

Prudence. 



FROM EMERSON. 317 

The use of literature is to afford us a 
platform whence we may command a 
view of our present life, a purchase by 
which we may move it. 

Circles. 



October joth. 
If I quake, what matters it what I quake 
at? 

Character. 

O what a load 

Of care and toil 

By lying Use bestowed, 

From his shoulders falls, who sees 

The true astronomy, 

The period of peace! 

Counsel which the ages kept, 

Shall the well-born soul accept. 

The Celestial Love. 



318 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

October jist 

Here friendly landlords, men ineloquent, 
Inhabit, and subdue the spacious farms. 
Traveler! to thee, perchance, a tedious 

road, 
Or soon forgotten picture, — to these men 
The landscape is an armory of powers, 
Which, one by one, they know to draw 

and use. 

Musketaquid. 

He is commanded in nature, by the liv- 
ing power which he feels to be there 
present. No imitation, or playing of 
these things, would content him; he loves 
the earnest of the northwind, of rain, of 
stone, and wood, and iron. 

The Poet. 



NOVEMBER. 



November ist. 

There are many events in the field 

Which are not shown to common 
eyes, 
But all her shows did nature yield 

To please and win this pilgrim wise. 
He saw the partridge drum in the 
woods, 

He heard the woodcock's evening 
hymn, 
He found the tawny thrush's broods, 

And the shy hawk did wait for him. 
What others did at distance hear, 

And guessed within the thicket's gloom, 
Was showed to this philosopher, 

And at his bidding seemed to come. 

Wood Notes. 
321 



322 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

November 2d. 
If you meet a sectary or a hostile par- 
tisan, never recognize the dividing lines, 
but meet on what common ground re- 
mains, — if only that the sun shines and 
the rain rains for both, — the area will 
widen very fast, and ere you know it, 
the boundary mountains on which the 
eye had fastened have melted into air. If 
he set out to contend, almost St. Paul 
will lie, almost St. John will hate. What 
low, poor, paltry, hypocritical people an 
argument on religion will make of the 

pure and chosen souls. 

Prudence. 

November 3d. 
Our eyes 

Are armed, but we are strangers to the 
stars, 



FROM EMERSON. 323 

And strangers to the mystic beast and 

bird, 
And strangers to the plant and to the 

mine; 
The injured elements say, Not in us ; 
And night and day, ocean and continent, 
Fire, plant, and mineral say, Not in us, 
And haughtily return us stare for stare. 
For we invade them impiously for gain, 
We devastate them unreligiously, 
And coldly ask their pottage, not their love, 
Therefore they shove us from them, yield 

to us 
Only what to our griping toil is due; 
But the sweet affluence of love and song, 
The rich results of the divine consents 
Of man and earth, of world beloved and 

lover, 
The nectar and ambrosia are withheld. 

Blight. 



324 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

November 4th. 
Love, and you shall be loved. All love 
is mathematically just, as much as the 
two sides of an algebraic equation. The 
good man has absolute good, which like 
fire turns everything to its own nature, 
so that you cannot do him any harm ; but 
as the royal armies sent against Napoleon, 
when he approached cast down their 
colors and from enemies became friends, 
so do disasters of all kinds, as sickness, 
offense, poverty, prove benefactors. 

Compensation, 



November 5th. 
Long I followed happy guides, — 
I could never reach their sides. 
Their step is forth, and, ere the day, 
Breaks up their leaguer, and away. 



FROM EMERSON. 325 

Keen my sense, my heart was young, 
Right goodwill my sinews strung, 
But no speed of mine avails 
To hunt upon their shining trails. 

The Forerunners. 

Tantalus is but a name for you and me. 
Tantalus means the impossibility of 
drinking the waters of thought which are 
always gleaming and waving within sight 
of the soul. 

History. 

November 6th. 
Set not thy foot on graves ; 
Nor seek to unwind the shroud 
Which charitable time 
And nature have allowed 
To wrap the errors of a sage sublime. 

Set not thy foot on graves ; 
Care not to strip the dead 



326 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

Of his sad ornament; 

His myrrh, and wine, and rings, 

His sheet of lead, 

And trophies buried; 

Go get them where he earned them 

when alive, 

As resolutely dig or dive. 

To J. W. 

November 7th. 
It is told of Brutus, that when he fell 
on his sword after the battle of Philippi, 
he quoted aline of Euripides, " O Virtue! 
I have followed thee through life, and I 
find thee at last but a shade." I doubt 
not the hero is slandered by this report. 
The heroic soul does net sell its justice 
and its nobleness. It does not ask to 
dine nicely and to sleep warm. The es- 
sence of greatness is the perception that 
virtue is enough. Poverty is its orna- 



FROM EMERSON. 327 



ment. Plenty it does not need, and can 
very well abide its loss. 

Heroism. 

November 8th. 
Time, which shows so vacant, in- 
divisible and divine in its coming, is slit 
and peddled into trifles and tatters. A 
door is to be painted, a lock to be re- 
paired. I want wood or oil, or meal or 
salt; the house smokes, or I have a head- 
ache; then the tax; and an affair to be 
transacted with a man without heart or 
brains, and the stinging recollection of 
an injurious or very awkward word, — 
these eat up the hours. . . . We are 
instructed by these petty experiences 
which usurp the hours and years. . . . 
Not one stroke can labor lay without 
some new acquaintance with nature. 

Prudence. 



328 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

November gth. 
When good is near you, when you 
have life in yourself, — it is not by any 
known or appointed way; you shall not 
discern the footprints of any other; you 
shall not see the face of man ; you shall 
not hear any name; — the way, the 
thought, the good, shall be wholly 
strange and new. It shall exclude all 
other being. You take the way from 
man, not to man. All persons that ever 
existed are its fugitive ministers. There 
shall be no fear in it. Fear and hope are 
alike beneath it. It asks nothing. There 
is somewhat low even in hope. We are 
then in vision. There is nothing that 
can be called gratitude, nor properly joy. 
The soul is raised over passion. It seeth 
identity and eternal causation. It is a 
perceiving that Truth and Right are. 



FROM EMERSON. 329 

Hence it becomes a Tranquillity out of 
the knowing that all things go well. 

Self-Reliance, 

November loih. 
The fate of the poor shepherd, who, 
blinded and lost in the snowstorm, 
perishes in a drift within a few feet of 
his cottage door, is an emblem of the 
state of man. On the brink of the 
waters of life and truth, we are miser- 
ably dying. The inaccessibleness of 
every thought but that we are in, is 
wonderful. 



The Poet 



November nth. 
Seek not the Spirit, if it hide, 
Inexorable to thy zeal : 
Baby, do not whine and chide; 
Art thou not also real ? 



330 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

Why should'st thou stoop to poor ex- 
cuse? 

Turn on the Accuser roundly ; say, 

" Here am I, here will I remain 

Forever to myself soothfast, 

Go thou, sweet Heaven, or, at thy pleas- 
ure stay." — 

Already Heaven with thee its lot has cast, 

For it only can absolutely deal. 

" Sursum Corda." 

November 12th. 
All goes to show that the soul in man 
is not an organ, but animates and exer- 
cises all the organs; is not a function, 
like the power of memory, of calcu- 
lation, of comparison, — but uses these as 
hands and feet; is not a faculty, but a 
light; is not the intellect or the will, but 
the master of the intellect and the will; 



FROM EMERSON. 331 

— is the vast background of our being, in 
which they lie, — an immensity not pos- 
sessed and that cannot be possessed. 
From within or from behind, a light 
shines through us upon things and 
makes us aware that we are nothing, 
but the light is all. 

The Over-Soul. 

November ijth. 
What is the hardest task in the world ? 
To think. I would put myself in the 
attitude to look in the eye an abstract 
truth, and I cannot. I blench and with- 
draw on this side and on that. I seem to 
know what he meant who said, No 
man can see God face to face and live. 

Intellect 

We are stung by the desire for new 
thought, but when we receive a new 



332 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

thought it is only the old thought with a 
new face, and though we make it our 
own we instantly crave another; we are 
not really enriched. 

Ibid, 

November 14th. 
What is rich ? Are you rich enough 
to help anybody ? 

Manners. 

Without the rich heart, wealth is an 
ugly beggar. 

Ibid. 

November 15th. 
Heroism is an obedience to a secret 
impulse of an individual's character. 

Heroism. 

Self-trust is the essence of heroism. It 
is the state of the soul at war, and its 
ultimate objects are the last defiance of 
falsehood and wrong, and the power to 



FROM EMERSON. 333 

bear all that can be inflicted by evil 
agents. It speaks the truth and it is just. 
It is generous, hospitable, temperate, 
scornful of petty calculations and scorn- 
ful of being scorned. It persists; it is of 
an undaunted boldness and of a fortitude 
not to be wearied out. Its jest is the lit- 
tleness of common life. 

Heroism. 

November 16th. 
What joys has kind nature provided 
for us dear creatures! There seems to 
be no interval between greatness and 
meanness. When the spirit is not mas- 
ter of the world, then it is its dupe. Yet 
the little man takes the great hoax so in- 
nocently, works in it so headlong and 
believing, is born red, and dies gray, ar- 
ranging his toilet, attending on his own 
health, laying traps for sweet food and 



S34 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

strong wine, setting his heart on a horse 
or a rifle, made happy with a little gossip 
or a little praise, that the great soul can- 
not choose but laugh at such earnest non- 
sense. 

Heroism. 

Mortal mixed of middle clay. 

Guy. 

November iyth. 
Some wisdom comes out of every 
natural and innocent action. 

Prudence, 

November 18th. 
If you would not be known to do any- 
thing, never do it. 

Spiritual Laws. 

All infractions of love and equity in 

our social relations are speedily punished. 

They are punished by Fear. 

Compensation. 



FROM EMERSON. 335 

November ipth. 
I rejoice with a serene eternal peace. I 
contract the boundaries of possible mis- 
chief. I learn the wisdom of St. Bernard, 
" Nothing can work me damage except 
myself; the harm that I sustain I carry 
about with me, and never am a real suf- 
ferer but by my own fault." 

Compensation, 

November 20th. 
Aristocracy and fashion are certain in- 
evitable results. These mutual selections 
are indestructible. If they provoke anger 
in the least favored class, and the ex- 
cluded majority revenge themselves on 
the excluding minority, by the strong 
hand, and kill them, at once a new class 
finds itself at the top, as certainly as 
cream rises in a bowl of milk: and if the 
people should destroy class after class, 



336 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

until two men only were left, one of 

these would be the leader, and would be 

involuntarily served and copied by the 

other. 

Manners. 

November 21st. 
O friend, never strike sail to a fear. 
Come into port greatly, or sail with God 
the seas. Not in vain you live, for every 
passing eye is cheered and refined by the 
vision. 

Heroism. 

November 22d. 

The life of truth is cold, and so far 
mournful; but it is not the slave of tears, 
contritions, and perturbations. It does 
not attempt another's work, nor adopt 
another's facts. It is a main lesson of 
wisdom to know your own from an- 



FROM EMERSON. 337 

other's. I have learned that I cannot dis- 
pose of other people's facts; but I possess 
such a key to my own, as persuades me 
against all their denials, that they also 
have a key to theirs. 

Experience. 

November 23d. 
Nobody can reflect upon an uncon- 
scious act with regret or contempt. 
Bard or hero cannot look down on the 
word or gesture of a child. It is as great 
as they. 

History. 

November 24th. 
We talk sometimes of a great talent 
for conversation, as if it were a perma- 
nent property in some individuals. Con- 
versation is an evanescent relation, — no 
more. A man is reputed to have thought 



338 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

and eloquence; he cannot, for all that, 
say a word to his cousin or his uncle. 
They accuse his silence with as much 
reason as they would blame the insignifi- 
cance of a dial in the shade. In the sun 
it will mark the hour. Among those 
who enjoy his thought he will regain his 

tongue. 

Friendship. 

November 25th. 
Society always consists, in greatest 
part, of young and foolish persons. The 
old, who have seen through the hypoc- 
risy of courts and statesmen, die, and 
leave no wisdom to their sons. They 
believe their own newspaper, as their 
fathers did at their age. 

Politics. 

Young people admire talents or par- 
ticular excellences; as we grow older, 



FROM EMERSON. 339 

we value total powers and effects, as, the 
impression, the quality, the spirit of men 
and things. The genius is all. The 
man, — it is his system: we do not try a 
solitary word or act, but his habit. 

Nominalist and Realist 

November 26th. 
Our faith comes in moments; our vice 
is habitual. Yet there is a depth in those 
brief moments which constrains us to 
ascribe more reality to them than to all 
other experiences. For this reason the 
argument which is always forthcoming 
to silence those who conceive extraordi- 
nary hopes of man, namely the appeal to 
experience, is forever invalid and vain. 
A mightier hope abolishes despair. We 
give up the past to the objector, and yet 
we hope. He must explain this hope. 



340 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

We grant that human life is mean, but 
how did we find out that it was mean ? 
What is the ground of this uneasiness of 
ours; of this old discontent? What is 
the universal sense of want and igno- 
rance, but the fine innuendo by which the 
great soul makes its enormous claim ? 

The Over-Soul 

November 2jth. 
But the soul that ascendeth to worship 
the great God is plain and true; has no 
rose color; no fine friends; no chivalry; 
no adventures; does not want admira- 
tion; dwells in the hour that now is, in 
the earnest experience of the common 
day, — by reason of the present moment 
and the mere trifle having become por- 
ous to thought and bibulous of the sea 

of light. 

The Over-Soul, 



FROM EMERSON. 341 

November 28th. 

One might find argument for optimism 
in the abundant flow of this saccharine 
element of pleasure in every suburb and 
extremity of the good world. 

Prudence. 

A day is a sound and solid good. 

Experience. 

November 29th. 

Because the soul is progressive, it 
never quite repeats itself, but in every 
act attempts the production of a new and 
fairer whole. 

Art. 

He has conceived meanly of the re- 
sources of man, who believes that the 
best age of production is past. 

Ibid. 



342 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

November joth. 
The philosophy of six thousand years 
has not searched the chambers and mag- 
azines of the soul. In its experiments 
there has always remained, in the last 
analysis, a residuum it could not resolve. 
Man is a stream whose source is hidden. 
Always our being is descending into us 
from we know not whence. The most 
exact calculator has no prescience that 
somewhat incalculable may not baulk 
the very next moment. I am constrained 
every moment to acknowledge a higher 
origin for events than the will I call 

mine. 

The Over-Soul. 



DECEMBER. 



December ist. 
So much of our time is preparation, so 
much is routine, and so much retrospect, 
that the pith of each man's genius con- 
tracts itself to a very few hours. 

Experience, 

But real action is in silent moments. 
The epochs of our life are not in the visi- 
ble facts of our choice of a calling, our 
marriage, our acquisition of an office, and 
the like, but in a silent thought by the 
wayside as we walk; in a thought which 
revises our entire manner of life and 
says, "Thus hast thou done, but it were 
better thus." 

Spiritual Laivs. 
345 



346 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

December 2d. 
Patience and patience, we shall win at 
the last. We must be very suspicious 
of the deceptions of the element of time. 
It takes a good deal of time to eat or to 
sleep, or to earn a hundred dollars, and a 
very little time to entertain a hope and an 
insight which becomes the light of our 
life. 

Experience. 

December 3d. 
So use all that is called Fortune. Most 
men gamble with her, and gain all, and 
lose all, as her wheel rolls. But do thou 
leave as unlawful these winnings, and 
deal with Cause and Effect, the chancel- 
lors of God. In the Will work and ac- 
quire, and thou hast chained the wheel 
of Chance, and shalt always drag her 
after thee. A political victory, a rise of 



FROM EMERSON. 347 

rents, the recovery of your sick or the 
return of your absent friend, or some 
other quite external event raises your 
spirits, and you think good days are pre- 
paring for you. Do not believe it. It 
can never be so. Nothing can bring you 
peace but yourself. Nothing can bring 
you peace but the triumph of principles. 

Self- Reliance. 

December 4th. 
If therefore a man claims to know and 
speak of God and carries you backward 
to the phraseology of some old mould- 
ered nation in another country, in an- 
other world, believe him not. Is the 
acorn better than the oak which is its 
fulness and completion ? Is the parent 
better than the child into whom he has 
cast his ripened being? Whence then 



348 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

this worship of the past ? The centuries 
are conspirators against the sanity and 
majesty of the soul. Time and space are 
but physiological colors which the eye 
maketh, but the soul is light; where it 
is, is day; where it was, is night. 

Self-BeUance. 

December 5th. 
As soon as beauty is sought, not from 
religion and love but for pleasure, it de- 
grades the seeker. High beauty is no 
longer attainable by him in canvas or in 
stone, in sound, or in lyrical construc- 
tion; an effeminate, prudent, sickly 
beauty, which is not beauty, is all that 
can be formed; for the hand can never 
execute anything higher than the char- 
acter can inspire. 

Art. 



FROM EMERSON. 349 

December 6th. 
Every man alone is sincere. At the 
entrance of a second person, hypocrisy 
begins. 

Friendship. 

Conversation is a game of circles. 

Circles. 

But a friend is a sane man who exer- 
cises not my ingenuity, but me. My 
friend gives me entertainment without 
requiring me to stoop, or to lisp, or to 
mask myself. A friend therefore is a 
sort of paradox in nature. 

Friendship. 

December yth. 
It is dislocation and detachment from 
the life of God, that makes things ugly. 

The Poet. 



350 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

Beauty is ever that divine thing the 
ancients esteemed it. It is, they said, 
the flowering of virtue. 

Love, 

Thus, historically viewed, it has been 
the office of art to educate the perception 
of beauty. We are immersed in beauty, 
but our eyes have no clear vision. 

Art 

December 8th. 
For you, a broker, there is no other 
principle but arithmetic. For me, com- 
merce is of trivial import; love, faith, 
truth of character, the aspiration of man, 
these are sacred; nor can I detach one 
duty, like you, from all other duties, and 
concentrate my forces mechanically on 
the payment of moneys. Let me live 
onward; you shall find that, though 



FE03I EMERSON. 351 



slower, the progress of my character will 
liquidate all these debts without injustice 
to higher claims. 

Circles. 



December gth. 
A man should not go where he cannot 
carry his whole sphere or society with 
him, — not bodily, the whole circle of his 
friends, but atmospherically. 

Manners. 



The favorites of society and what it 
calls whole souls, are able men, and of 
more spirit than wit, who have no un- 
comfortable egotism, but who exactly 
fill the hour and the company, contented 

and contenting. 

Ibid. 



352 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

December 10th. 
We are holden to men by every sort of 
tie, by blood, by pride, by fear, by hope, 
by lucre, by lust, by hate, by admiration, 
by every circumstance and badge and 
trifle, but we can scarce believe that so 
much character can subsist in another as 
to draw us by love. Can another be so 
blessed and we so pure that we can offer 
him tenderness ? When a man becomes 
dear to me 1 have touched the goal of 
fortune. 

Friendship. 

December nth. 
Man is explicable by nothing less than 
all his history. Without hurry, without 
rest, the human spirit goes forth from 
the beginning to embody every faculty, 
every thought, every emotion which be- 



FROM E3TERS0N. 353 

longs to it, in appropriate events. But 
always the thought is prior to the fact; 
all the facts of history preexist in the 
mind as laws. Each law in turn is made 
by circumstances predominant, and the 
limits of nature give power to but one at 
a time. A man is the whole encyclo- 
paedia of facts. 

History. 

December 12th. 
To believe your own thought, to be- 
lieve that what is true for you in your 
private heart is true for all men, — that is 
genius. Speak your latent conviction, 
and it shall be the universal sense; for 
always the inmost becomes the outmost 
— and our first thought is rendered back 
to us by the trumpets of the Last Judg- 
ment. 

Self- Reliance. 



354 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

December ijth. 
And yet the compensations of calamity 
are made apparent to the understanding 
also, after long intervals of time. A 
fever, a mutilation, a cruel disappoint- 
ment, a loss of wealth, a loss of friends, 
seems at the moment unpaid loss, and 
unpayable. But the sure years reveal the 
deep remedial force that underlies all 
facts. The death of a dear friend, wife, 
brother, lover, which seemed nothing but 
privation, somewhat later assumes the as- 
pect of a guide or genius; . . . and the 
man or woman who would have remained 
a sunny garden-flower, with no room for 
its roots and too much sunshine for its 
head, by the falling of the walls and the 
neglect of the. gardener is made the 
banian of the forest, yielding shade and 
fruit to wide neighborhoods of men. 

Compensation. 



FROM EMERSON. 355 

December 14th. 

Truth is our element of life, yet if a 
man fasten his attention on a single 
aspect of truth and apply himself to that 
alone for a long time, the truth becomes 
distorted and not itself but falsehood; 
herein resembling the air, which is our 
natural element and the breath of our 
nostrils, but if a stream of the same be 
directed on the body for a time, it causes 
cold, fever, and even death. 

Intellect. 



December 15th. 

Life is a series of surprises. We do 
not guess to-day the mood, the pleasure, 
the power of to-morrow, when we are 
building up our being. 

Circles. 



356 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

Pass in, pass in, the angels say, 

In to the upper doors; 

Nor count compartments of the floors, 

But mount to Paradise 

By the stairway of surprise. 

Merlin. 



December 16th. 

Revelation is the disclosure of the soul. 
The popular notion of a revelation, is, 
that it is a telling of fortunes. . . . Men 
ask of the immortality of the soul, and 
the employments of heaven, and the state 
of the sinner, and so forth. They even 
dream that Jesus has left replies to pre- 
cisely these interrogatories. Never a 
moment did that sublime spirit speak in 
their patois. 

The Over-Soul. 



FROM EMERSON. 357 

December iyth. 
Your genuine action will explain itself 
and will explain your other genuine ac- 
tions. Your conformity explains noth- 
ing. Act singly, and what you have 
already done singly will justify you now. 
Greatness always appeals to the future. 
If I can be great enough now to do right 
and scorn eyes, I must have done so 
much right before as to defend me now. 
Be it how it will, do right now. Always 
scorn appearances and you always may. 

Self -Reliance. 

December 18th. 
They added ridge to valley, brook to pond, 
And sighed for all that bounded their do- 
main, 
"This suits me for a pasture; that's my 
park, 



358 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

We must have clay, lime, gravel, granite- 
ledge, 

And misty lowland where to go for peat. 

The land is well, — lies fairly to the south. 

Tis good, when you have crossed the 
sea and back, 

To find the sitfast acres where you left 
them." 

Ah! the hot owner sees not Death, who 
adds 

Him to his land, a lump of mould the 
more. 

Hamatreya. 

December ipth. 

In the midst of abuses, in the heart of 
cities, in the aisles of false churches, alike 
in one place and in another — wherever, 
namely, a just and heroic soul finds itself, 
there it will do what is next at hand, and 



FROM EMERSON. 359 

by the new quality of character it shall 
put forth, it shall abrogate that old con- 
dition, law or school in which it stands, 
before the law of its own mind. 

New England Reformers. 

December 20th. 
There are natural ways of arriving at 
the same ends at which these aim, but do 
not arrive. Why should all virture work 
in one and the same way ? Why should 
all give dollars ? It is very inconvenient 
to us country folk, and we do not think 
any good will come of it. We have not 
dollars. Merchants have. Let them give 
them. Farmers will give corn. Poets 
will sing. Women will sew. Laborers 
will lend a hand. The children will bring 
flowers. 

Spiritual Laws. 



360 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

December 21st. 
Eat thou the bread which men refuse; 
Flee from the goods which from thee flee; 
Seek nothing; Fortune seeketh thee. 
Nor mount, nor dive; all good things 

keep 
The midway of the eternal deep; 
Wish not to fill the isles with eyes 
To fetch thee birds of paradise; 
On thine orchard's edge belong 
All the brass of plume and song; 
Wise Ali's sunbright sayings pass 
For proverbs in the market-place; 
Through mountains bored by regal art 
Toil whistles as he drives his cart. 
Nor scour the seas, nor sift mankind, 
A poet or a friend to find; 
Behold, he watches at the door, 
Behold his shadow on the floor. 

Saadi. 



FROM EMERSON. 361 

December 22d. 

I do not find that the age or country 
makes the least difference; no, nor the 
language the actors spoke, nor the re- 
ligion they professed, whether Arab in 
the desert or Frenchman in the Acad- 
emy. I see that sensible and conscien- 
tious men all over the world were of 
one religion. 

The Preacher. 



December 23d. 

I fear to breathe any treason against the 
majesty of love, which is the genius and 
god of gifts, and to whom we must not 
affect to prescribe. Let him give king- 
doms or flower-leaves indifferently. 

Gifts. 



362 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

He is a good man, who can receive a 
gift well. 

Ibid. 

December 24th. 
The only gift is a portion of thyself. 
Thou must bleed for me. Therefore the 
poet brings his poem; the shepherd, his 
lamb; the farmer, corn; the miner, a 
gem; the sailor, coral and shells; the 
painter, his picture; the girl, a hand- 
kerchief of her own sewing. 

Gifts. 

Compared with that good-will I bear 

my friend, the benefit it is in my power 

to render him seems small. 

Ibid. 

December 25th. 
Be a gift and a benediction. 

Spiritual Laws. 



FE03I E3TERS0N. 363 

December 26th. 
The selfish man suffers more from his 
selfishness than he from whom that sel- 
fishness withholds some important bene- 
fit. What he most wishes is to be lifted 
to some higher platform, that he may 
see beyond his present fear the transal- 
pine good, so that his fear, his coldness, 
his custom may be broken up like frag- 
ments of ice, melted and carried away 
in the great stream of good-will. Do 
you ask my aid ? I also wish to be a 
benefactor. I wish more to be a bene- 
factor and servant than you wish to be 
served by me, and surely the greatest 
good fortune that could befall me is 
precisely to be so moved by you that I 
should say, " Take me and all mine, and 
use me and mine freely to your ends!" 
for I could not say it, otherwise than be- 



384 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

cause a great enlargement had come to 
my heart and mind, which made me 
superior to my fortunes. 

New England Reformers. 



December 2jth. 

Pleaseth him the Eternal Child 
To play his sweet will, glad and wild; 
As the bee through the garden ranges, 
From world to world the godhead 

changes; 
As the sheep go feeding through the 

waste, 
From form to form he maketh haste. 
This vault which glows immense with 

light 
Is the inn where he lodges for a night. 
What recks such Traveler if the bowers 



FROM EMERSON. 365 

Which bloom and fade like summer 

flowers, 
A bunch of fragrant lilies be, 
Or the stars of eternity ? 

Wood Notes. 

December 28th. 
The painted sled stands where it stood, 
The kennel by the corded wood, 
The gathered sticks to stanch the wall 
Of the snow-tower, when snow 

should fall, 
The ominous hole he dug in the sand, 
And childhood's castles built or 

planned. 
His daily haunts I well discern, 
The poultry yard, the shed, the barn, 
And every inch of garden ground 
Paced by the blessed feet around, 
From the roadside to the brook, 
Whereinto he loved to look. 



366 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

Step the meek birds where erst they 

ranged, 
The wintry garden lies unchanged, 
The brook into the stream runs on, 
But the deep-eyed Boy is gone. 

Threnody. 

December 29th. 
But we are often made to feel that our 
affections are but tents of a night. 
Though slowly and with pain, the ob- 
jects of the affections change, as the ob- 
jects of thought do. There are moments 
when the affections rule and absorb the 
man and make his happiness dependent 
on a person or persons. But in health 
the mind is presently seen again, — its 
overarching vault, bright with galaxies 
of immutable lights, and the warm loves 
and fears that swept over us as clouds 



FROM EMERSON. 367 

must lose their finite character and blend 
with God, to attain their own perfection. 
But we need not fear that we can lose 
anything by the progress of the soul. 
The soul may be trusted to the end. 
That which is so beautiful and attractive 
as these relations, must be succeeded and 
supplanted only by what is more beau- 
tiful, and so on forever. 

Love. 



December joth. 
Shall not the heart which has received 
so much, trust the Power by which it 
lives ? May it not quit other leadings, 
and listen to the Soul which has guided 
it so gently, and taught it so much, 
secure that the future will be worthy of 
the past ? 

New England Reformers. 



368 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

December 31st. 
The fiend that man harries, 

Is love of the Best; 
Yawns the Pit of the Dragon 

Lit by rays from the Blest. 
The Lethe of Nature 

Can't trance him again, 
Whose soul sees the Perfect, 

Which his eyes seek in vain. 

Profounder, profounder, 
Man's spirit must dive; 

To his aye-rolling orbit 
No goal will arrive. 

The heavens that draw him 
With sweetness untold, 

Once found, — for new heavens 

He spurneth the old. 
* * * * * 

Eterne alternation 
Now follows, now flies, 



FROM EMERSON. 361 

And under pain, pleasure, 
Under pleasure, pain lies. 

Love works at the centre, 
Heart-heaving alway ; 

Forth speed the strong pulses 
To the borders of day. 

Tlie Sphinx. 



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